Worldwar: Change of the Balance
by MTT3
Summary: The Race has invaded, much of the Earth has fallen to the lizards from outer space. Humanity is on the brink of being overrun...but then from a totally unexpected side they receive help. Note: For a better view on the pic please go here: /gallery/39115728
1. The Visitor

"THAT'S ENOUGH!"

The vice president of the United States slammed his hand on the table to stop the quarrel between the German Fuhrer, the people's commissar for foreign affairs, Michailowitsch Molotow, and the British prime minister Winston Churchill.

"We haven't even talked for half an hour and you are already on the brink of fighting each other again. We truly have other, much more serious problems now. Just look at the map."

He pointed at the map on the wall, nearly the entire southern hemisphere was colored in yellow, and also on the northern hemisphere there was a lot of yellow, but there was still a lot of blue, red and brown.

"We already lost half of the planet to these extraterrestrial bastards, and you have not other problems than still quarreling? Shame on you."

The German Fuhrer had wanted to reach back with his arm to send the Soviet commissar flying through the room, but decided not to do so.

"I am sorry Gentlemen", he answered in broken school English with an audible German accent, while he put his tie in order "but insulting me like this was just to much."

The Soviet commissar wrinkled his nose, but didn't answer.

"Well, since we sorted that out now...", Winston Churchill said"...maybe we should start with the negotiations about how we should start this alliance. Until now each of our nations has fought these lizards on his own, without any big success. The only chance of at least holding our positions we have now is to fight together, share the technology we have and develop new ones. Only then we have a slight chance of not ending in eternal slavery."

"Just listen to yourself..." the Soviet commissar said, "...now you are suggesting what just a few years ago you refused us, when those Ger...Nazi bastards invaded us. Your antipathy against our nation has caused the death of millions of lives, how should we know that this time you are serious?"

The Prime Minister wanted to say something , but was interrupted when somebody knocked on the door.

"Step inside." he said.

Someone who seemed to be a French officer stepped in saluted, and then offered his hand to the British and the American politician.

"Sorry I'm late Gentlemen. But the Race has bombed inner London again. Took quote some time to get here without being killed by a guided missile." He shook his head. Then he looked at the two other politicians. He just nodded into their direction, but didn't offer them his hand.

"You haven't missed anything yet Charles, only this...rougher discussion these two gentlemen nearly had."

"Oh is that so? Well, I guess if they had started one, I would have been glad to join them."

Again the Vice President had to slam at the table, this time even harder to gain the attention of everybody in the room.

"Gentlemen. Please, the situation is to dire to joke around like that. Especially you monsieur de Gaule. Your nation is nearly half occupied by these aliens, so you better should start one of your well known speeches to inspire La Resistance a bit more."

"My nation...", he started, sounding really miffed, "...la grand nation de la France, is not only occupied by these extra-terrestrials, but also by les allemands. So excuse me, Sir."

"You know I already told you that as soon as we can spare some of our equipment, we will give it to you, ending the occupation and you can fight again in your nation, at our side against the lizards."

"Sorry but I don't feel really safe now if you say this. La France has suffered enough in this war I don't want to be stabbed in my back while fighting on your side."

The German Fuhrer wiped away some sweat drops of his smooth upper lips, sighing.

"And I told you too, that I didn't want it to come where we are now. I served in the Wehrmacht as a soldier to protect this nation. It was not my fault that Hitler perverted it into...this." He shook his hand, pointing at two photographs that were lying on the table showing loads of corpses in the concentration camps in eastern Europe. At least those who were still alive don't have to fear now to die from starvation or in gas-chambers, since nearly all of eastern Europe was now occupied by the Race. From what they heard a lot of people are sympathizing with them and who could blame them?

Before anybody could say another word, an explosion directly outside the building shook the room, shattering the window and sending debris through the room. Luckily nobody of the men were standing in front of it, several years of war had taught them to be careful during a bombing raid.

"Dammit. Was this one of these guided missiles again? How can the Race know that we are here, this meeting should be top secret."

Not even a minute later two soldiers ran into the room without knocking, one was a soldier of the former British expeditionary force the other one a soldier of the Wehrmacht, only without the Swastika now.

"Sirs, this...you have to see this. We...we..."Both of them were slightly shaking, unable to tell them exactly what just happened.

The politicians just looked at each other. What the hell could happened that these war-proofen soldiers were so frightened?

They walked slowly through the outer courtyard of the building. When they all walked around the corner they froze.

They thought they would find a crater, maybe a half exploded bomb from the alien invaders, but they didn't expect this.

A metallic platform nearly twenty meter in diameter was standing there, and on the platform where nine metal boxes, stacked in three piles, each one about the size of a small truck. Every few seconds there were small blue lightning, erupting from the platform like it was under current.

And in the middle of it was something that looked like a cockpit from an aircraft, only without wings and engines.

Suddenly the lit slowly opened, the glass and metal object moving upwards. The politicians and several British, French and German soldiers were watching the scene with their mouths wide open.

When the lit was finally open, a person stood up, totally enveloped in a black full body suit. All of the soldiers now aimed at the strange looking person who slowly walked towards them.

Some of the soldiers stepped a bit back, surprisingly even more scared when they first fought against the alien invaders. Suddenly one of the soldiers opened fire, holding the trigger of his machine gun. Like this was an order, all of them opened fire, from German Sturmgewehre 44, British Lanchester submachine guns and French MAS-38s. Within seconds they all emptied their magazines. It must have been hundreds of bullets that had been shot at this person.

But he was unharmed, all the bullets were hanging in the air, like they were inside a glass wall, just floating about one meter before that person.

Then with a clacking sound they all fell to the floor. Some of the soldiers let their rifles fall too, raising their hands up.

But the person just shook his head and said without any accent:

"There is no need for fear, brave soldiers. Just like you..." he opened his helmet at took it off, shaking his hair, "...I am human."

Until now no-one of the politicians had said anything and it seemed that neither of them would be able to within the next few minutes.

"From the future?", the French General asked disbelievingly.

The British Prime Minister, who was now sitting in his polsterd chair again, just took a sip from a metal flask, soothing his old nerves with a bit of Whiskey, as did the Soviet commissar with a bit of Wodka. Only the German Fuhrer and the French General just took a glas of water, preferring to stay at attentive as possible.

"That is true...and not. You can say I am from another dimension."

"Another dimension?" the Vice president asked. They were all now sitting around a table in a bunker, while the soldiers on the surface were trying to cover the equipment the weird visitor brought with.

"Yes. To explain it simple, I am from another dimension where this invasion here by these aliens never happened. At least not in 1943."

"I don't know if I understand. You just said before that you come from the year 2143, but now you tell us, that the invasion never happened. How can that be?"

The visitor took one of the papers on the table and started to draw, then he showed it to the politicians.

"It is like this, gentlemen, this line here, the big one is your time-line, and here at this point we have 1943. But lets say something different would have happened, something that would change the entire time-line like this..." he started a new line and connected it with the point 1943 "...like the invasion would never happen, this would create an entire new time-line. Just like mine. And in my time-line we developed a technology that allows us to watch other time lines and even travel to them." He drew a line from the point 2143 of his time-line to the date 1943.

The politicians just fell silent. Nobody said a word for nearly a minute then the German Fuhrer said: "And...what are you doing here?"

"I was sent here by the United Nations Inter-dimensional Council to help you to fight these invaders and end this war, gentlemen. This is my mission. The boxes you saw out there contains everything we need to win."

The faces of all the politicians lit up, showing a sudden joy they haven't felt in months now.

"WHAT? You truly...want to help us? This is...unbelievable." the American Vice-president cried out happily.

"Yes, I can imagine it mister Vice president. You have to know that we were invaded too. Well, just sort of. Because we were studying your time-line, we got knowledge of this conquest fleet. So we were looking for this fleet in our solar system, and we found it. They didn't even come near Earth, we intercepted them in the orbit of Mars. Of course they tried to shoot our spaceships, but all their missiles were shoot down by or weapons. In the end they had to surrender without a real fight. We brought them to the Saharan dessert and the center of Australia and other places around the world, where they would live in what we call 'Reservats'. There they would also built cities for the colonial fleet, that would appear later."

"A colonial fleet is coming too?" the American politician groaned weakly. This was simply too much to stand.

"Yes, but don't worry they won't arrive yet, only about 20 years later. So we still have time to fight the conquest fleet. But still, it will take a bit of time, gentlemen, before we can start this fight here."

"NO!" the French General yelled out. "Bring out your super-weapons now. Your death rays, your bombes atomique and destroy these bastards. Half of my homeland is occupied by these little scaly devils and the other half by these Teutonic barbarians. I want them out of my country now!"

"You are mistaken. These boxes do not contain any sort of weapons."

"What?" the Soviet commissar said. "How do you want us to fight them then?"

"Well as you have all ready noticed, their technology is not that much different than yours. More advanced yes, but nothing you wouldn't be able to built yourself with some time. In fact most of their weapons are standard weapons that humans would have had in the late 1990s, if the Race hadn't invaded Earth. Even in the early 2010s we had better weapons then they have now. But I cannot built them with the machines I brought you with.

It is impossible and...no, please let me continue. It is impossible because of a strange effect we witnessed. You have to know, we already have been to other time lines, like one were the Spanish flue got totally out of control, killing the population of entire nations. We sent a scientist with similar machines I brought with to their time-line so he could make a vaccine. But as soon as the vaccine was produced by our machines, it...fell apart, it just fell apart into its single atoms.

I don't know exactly how it works, you should ask one of our scientists for that, but it is like this that the universe seems to know when something is not meant to be yet. It can only work if someone from their time would develop it. Otherwise it would just vanish. If I would take my Nano-assemblers now and would build a British vulcain bomber or an American Abrahams tanks, they would be there for a seconds and then crumble to metal dust.

The limit to this is about 15 to 17 or 18 years, it is different in each time-line. So this means that I can only built machines and technology in this time-line that was built until 1960, maybe 1961. Sorry gentlemen, but that is how it works."

"And how should we fight the lizards then? You said that their technology is about late 1990s standard. And we should fight them with tanks and aircrafts from the 50s and 60s, do I understand that right?"

"Yes. I know it may sound a bit...inappropriate, but it is true." He looked into the direction of the Soviet commissar. "Quantity has its own quality. Isn't that was your comrade Stalin always uses to say?" The commissar just nodded, grinning.

"Still, I don't feel good with this, sending our brave pilots and soldiers out there with machines that are totally insufficient, while knowing that we could have planes and guns that are supperiour to theirs, if we only had more time. 'Demand anything but time.' Yeah, Napoleon was so right."

"I am sorry but this is the situation, Mister..."

"Staufenberg, Claus von Stauffenberg, the new Fuhrer of Germany."

Now it was the visitor who was surprised. "You are...and what happened to your...predecessor?"

"Dead. Killed by the atom bomb that fell on Berlin." he shrugged. "I and some other officers took the opportunity and let arrest the entire Gestapo and Waffen SS and opened the concentration camps that were still under our control. Only because of that I am allowed to stand here and negotiate with these Gentlemen here."

"Ah, so Operation Valkyrie was successful then?"

"Operation Valkyrie?"

"Well, in my time-line you and some other officers tried to kill Hitler in 1944 and take control of the Wehrmacht and Germany and the codeword for this attempt was Operation Valkyrie. Unfortunately you failed and were executed. I am glad that in at least one time-line you were successful."

"This is all good Gentlemen, but please let's concentrate on this time-line here. The extra-terrestrials are approaching our defensive lines in the Dakotas and Kansas, and are also approaching from the south into California and Texas and are now standing right before Houston. And we believe that they are trying to conquer New York. If we don't get any help soon our lines will collapse. And believe it or not, just yesterday we got an petition from the Japanese foreign minister for help."

"The same goes for us. The Japanese asked us too, since nearly all of their aircrafts got shot down and their land forces are way too inferior to the lizard's tanks. They asked us if we could send some tanks from our Siberian battalions to northern China which is impossible, our lines are totally overstretched, we already had to abandon a great part of our nation."

"We are still trying to regroup our troops from what is left at the battle at Kursk. But we are developing new measurements together with some British engineers, one of them had a pretty good idea to put thin metal plates above our tanks as a second hull to protect them against shaped charges. But still we are loosing ground every day."

The fuhrer looked at the inter-dimensional visitor.

"We need help as soon as possible. So please, start these factories, or there will no Earth left to be defended."

"Sure, I will teleport them to some locations we already decided in my time-line, one each here and here on east and west coast of the US, one in northern France for the French and British, one in the Harz mountains in Germany, three in the USSR, one in the Ural, one in the Caucasus and one near the Pacific coast. Another one in Japan, and the final one here in Australia, near Sydney. We first will start producing more advanced infantry weapons and..."

"INFANTRY? FOR GOD'S SAKE, WE NEED TANKS, DAMNIT!" the Vice president yelled out, loosing his temper now.

"Would you please listen to me. You are allready experimenting with these kind of weapons: The rocket-propelled grenades. The US have the Bazooka, the Germans have the Panzerschreck and Panzerfaust, and shortly after the war the soviets developed the RPG-2 out of the Panzerschreck. Maybe we will even be able to produce RPG-7s. That would help a lot, this weapon is so easy to handle even a twelve year old can do it, and it was often fired by twelve year olds, believe me.

We will produce these, at least the more advanced versions of them. The nano-assemblers will be able to produce several hundred thousands of them within a week. Then I will teleport a great deal of them around the world and supply resistance groups, which will bind the alien forces there. We will also build several millions of the Awtomat Kalaschnikowa 47, or just AK-47 the most produced assault rifle ever."

"Did you just say teleport?" The Prime Minister asked disbelievingly. So many wonders in so little time.

The visitor showed a small device that was attached to his left arm.

"This device here can do it. It can teleport me around the entire planet and equipment up to ten tons, but only a limited amount each day, before the energy cells have to reload themselves again. Another function of this machine here is mass-energy conversion. You have to know that the Nano-assemblers work like this, they can build everything atom by atom, so the easier something is to build, the faster it can be done. But it still needs the material. And this can either be done by simply putting it if front of the assembler and then it is...well sucked up by the machine and the atoms are regrouped to make something else. Or I take this device here and go to an area that has for example high deposits of iron or Titanium. Within a range of about 200 meters it can suck up every atom of this element and store it, then I can go back and upload it into the assembler and then it is built into a new weapon."

"So you want to say that we don't need any factories then. Only a safe building or even better an underground bunker where we can store these assemblers."

"Yes, that is all we need, since they also are powered by Zero-Point Energy. And please don't ask me what that is, that is way beyond your knowledge, and mine too." He snickered.

"What I want to tell you, that before we can start an worldwide attack we have to gather strength and also teach your soldiers how to use the weapons. That is why we have first to supply the rebels around the world. So your armies can be educated how to use, for example, F-86 Sabres, F-104, Mig 15s and 17s, which are good jets and we can equip them with your early guided missiles, like AIM-9 Sidewinders.

But don't set your hopes too high, even when we equip them with missile-warners and active countermeasures like flares and chaff, we will loose a lot of these aircrafts. But your soldiers have something that they don't have. Experience. The lizards did never fight an equal enemy so their tactics, as you maybe have already experienced, are really poor."

"What else are you planning to build?" the French General wanted to know.

"Mostly important...gunships, or helicopters. Best would be the Bell UH-1, it can be equipped with nearly any weapons, MGs, Machine canons, rockets and so forth. And of course tanks. I will give you a list, which I plan to build to fight the lizards.

But first...we will talk about the bill you will have to pay for this."

The temperature in the room suddenly seemed to drop. Did he really just say bill?

"You...you want us to pay you?" They couldn't believe it. First he was making them high hopes and then this.

"Not in money. But rather in humanity." He looked at the German and Soviet officer. "From you I want you to retreat to your borders of 1937. Of course if the people want you to stay there, which I doubt, you can do. Otherwise..."

Then he looked at the Prime-minister and the General. "And you will dissolve your colonial empires. Speak over the radio to the citizens of your colonies that if they will fight against the Race, you will grant them full independence."

"What you demand is impossible!"

"If you want to preserve your homeland, do it. I am even doing you a favor. Did you think that after World-war 2, they would have stood calm, while they fought for you? Of course not, they started uprising against you..."he pointed at the French General "...you would have experienced something that bordered on civil war, when then Maghreb states wanted their independence. In the end you had grant them full independence, but it was the end of the fourth republic and countless lives were lost, just because you were too proud and too stubborn, as if you did not learn it when you were defeated at Diem Biem Phu."

The two politicians looked down as if thinking hard.

"Maybe...maybe we can find an agreement, that they would give us...time to bring our settlers home or..."

"I will be the mediator between you and your colonies. Nevertheless the most important step has to be this one: We have to form a single organization that represents earth and its armies. This will send a shock-wave through the armies of the Race. Right now they are fighting dozens of armies, each only fighting for their own country. How do you think would they react if suddenly all these armies would fight under the same banner?"

"You want us to merge all our armed forces? This is absurd." the American Vice-President protested.

"No, but at least add to each of your own national emblems the one you decide what should represent Earth. This will start the first cracks in the confidence of the Race."

He showed the Emblem on his chest, a worldmap with two oil branches.

"This here is the Emblem of the United Nations in my timeline. It was officially formed after WW II that it may never happen again. It was a symbol of peace, and although not always successful, in the end we achieved it. In 2103 we had been able to declare world peace. Now let us found this organization again, as a symbol of humanity.

Gentlemen, let us establish the United Nations of Planet Earth."


	2. United we stand, divided we fall

- In orbit around Tose 3 (Earth) -

"Fleetlord Atvar?"

The lizard stiffened, showing the proper respect to his fleet-lord as he entered the command station of the invasion fleet's banner-ship 127th Emperor Hetto. As usual each day he came to the control room to observe the progress the conquest fleet had made on Tosev 3.

Shiplord Kirel touched a control panel and instantly a hologram of the planet appeared in front of them, showing a great part of the planet in bright red, while the various non-empires on the northern hemisphere where painted in other colors.

Only very small dots in the southern hemisphere reminded the males in the control room that the Tosevites, or humans as they called themselves, where still resisting violently, even in those parts that were totally occupied by the Race, a behavior that contradicts every logic and every record in the Race's databank.

"It looks like we are making good progress." Atvar commented.

"Indeed." Kirel responded. "The Tosevites will surely fall within the next few months, if not weeks." The lizard hisssed happily, and his tail stub wagged in anticipation when the last Tosevite resistance on this planet will fall and all will be under the control of the Empire.

"Sure. But let's not get carried away, some of those not-empires have are still very good at destroying many of our troopcarriers and landcruisers. And then this sudden uprising of the inhabitants of...how were these not-empires called? Chile and Argentine?"

He couldn't understand where these people got their weapons from. Although they were crude and primitive, they managed to expel their forces from some parts of these not-empires. Most parts the Race left on their own because of the cold weather and the high altitude there and they decided to deploy the troops from there to other places, where they were needed more urgently.

But to reconquer these parts right now they would have to call back troops from the front-lines and that would decelerate the conquest of the not-empires in the north. He decided to leave the situation as it was right now. Those resistance fighters hadn't made any progress in the last days so it was unlikely that they would be able to do so soon. Just as they would deal with the not-empire on the large southern continent.

It was barely inhabited by the Tosevites, but the warm climate would make it an ideal place for the Race to settle there. He even considered destroying the biggest cities in the southeast of the continent with explosive-metal-bombs, since the fallout would drift into the sea and cause no damage to the habitable land. That way it would be easier to conquer the entire continent. But he was still unsure about that step.

He enlarged the northern hemisphere, showing the frontlines where the brave males of their fleet were serving their duty for the Emperor. Even the thought of their emperor made him lower his eye turrets.

Then he looked at the hologram again. The most dangerous not-empire for sure were the USA, the Greater German Reich or Deutschland as it was called too, and the SSSR. Those had the most land of their former not-empires left although they had already lost quite a lot of their territory to the Race, but still they also were the most advanced ones in terms of technology. He considered to use more of the explosive metal bombs to show the Tosevites that resistance was futile.

But he was unsure. He first had ordered the use of two very small bombs on the capitals of the USA and Deutschland. He had expected that the Tosevites would surrender nearly immediately when the Race would show them their power. But instead the opposite happened.

The Tosevites were now even fighting more fiercely, more brutal against them, despite the demonstration of power. Maybe they needed some more demonstrations before they would realize how useless it would be to fight any longer.

But what if that wouldn't happen, that they would fight until he is forced to use so many of these bombs that is would render the planet uninhabitable? Those 'humans' were acting so illogical. Instead of accepting that they were inferior they were still fighting.

"Fleetlord Atvar?" A young communication officer asked for permission to speak with the Fleetlord.

"What is it, young soldier?"

"I...I got a new transmission, a strong one. It appears that is coming from the city of London, maybe from several places."

"And what is so extraordinary about this one? Are they maybe trying to contact us and ask for our mercy?" Kirel laughed at that comment.

"No. But...it is an audio-visual transmission."

"IMPOSSIBLE!" Kirel snapped at the young officer, who lowered his eye turrets.

"Now, now Kirel. We already have experienced more 'Impossible' things since we entered this star-system than any of us could have imagined. Maybe the Tosevites have just ceased their broadcast of these transmissions because of their own war before we entered the scene."

He looked at the officer with one eye turret. "Show it to us."

The communication officer connected the holographic projector with the com-system.

It was not a 3D projection, but rather a flat screen, only showing the transmission in black, gray and white colors.

What the lizards saw was a man who seemed to just have ended an announcement, because a few seconds later the screen was showing a group of men on a small stage, each behind a little lectern. The transmission was blurred and distorted a bit.

"Can you remove that interference?"

The officer hastily tried to do as he was ordered to, but had only little success.

"Forgive me Fleetlord. The problem is on the other end, the transmitter of the Tosevites is not good enough for a better reception."

Atvar nearly wished that they had better ones, so he could see clearly what these humans would be about to announce. At least the picture was not distorted anymore.

'They shouldn't have them at all, not even electricity.' he thought to himself.

"Good evening gentlemen." one of the Tosevites started, the transmission immediately translated by their computer. Atvar knew this one, he was called Winston Churchill, a representative of an Tosevite Empire that was called the British Empire. Another one was wearing the distinctive uniform of the Wehrmacht, one of the only armies that had been able now to show some form of significant resistance.

"We have assembled here to announce a statement that will change history forever, maybe even more than the invasion of these alien lizards."

Atvar swallowed hard, while Kirel hissed at the screen. What was this person implying?

"The invasion of these aliens has crippled our everyday life and our war machinery, we have suffered countless losses, on every continent, in every nation. Still we have not given up, still we are fighting. But not united. Each of our nations until now have fought on their own, just for their own nation. But we have to see that this fight does not know any borders, no lines on the map between the people of Earth.

Because of this fact, we, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America, the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, the Empire of Japan and the recently founded Federal Republic of Germany and the Fourth Republic of France has decided to pool their forces, by military and technological means. From now on our nations' armies will fight side by side, with a united command structure do coordinate our moves against The Race. This will not mean that we will dissolve our armies but rather fight shoulder to shoulder, united.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in Europe and Africa and elsewhere in the world, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our planet, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the djungles, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the cities; we shall never surrender."

He took a short break then he continued with his speech.

"The invasion of the Race has also shown us has how wrong we have been. Just like the Race we had invaded foreign territory for our own good, no matter who lived there. Only now while living through the same treatment by the Race as we did with other peoples around the world we have seen our mistake. After a long talk with the King and my ministers we came to an conclusion: In order to make amends to all our colonies, we have decided to grant all of them full independence. We know that in some of our colonies people there are sympathizing with the Race and we cannot blame you. We have done horrible things to you and you want to get rid of us.

But think of this: If we will be defeated what will be the consequences? Our colonial reign will only be replaced by another one. They will force their own culture, their own language, even their own religion onto you, even harsher then we did. From the alien soldiers we have been able to capture, we know that they want to eradicate every trace of our history and bury it. All our cultures, our languages will be gone and so will be yours. Therefore I ask you: Fight with us, side by side against the lizards from outer space. Only then all of us will be able to live in the culture we have been born into."

Atvar gasped at that speech. What was he talking about? Did he really think that the Tosevites around the world like in India or Africa or somewhere else would start uprising by a mere speech?

Then Winston Churchill looked at the Japanese official who started a similar speech, that Japan would grant its colonies full independence if they would fight with them, though he said that it would need some years to bring back their settlers so until then they would stay their colonies. But the Tenno promised their independence, when they would decide to fight with them. The French General held a nearly identical speech.

The next ones were the Vice-President of the USA and the SSSR, who said the US President Roosevelt and the General Secretary Michailowitsch Molotow, who had replaced Stalin, who was killed by a guided missile that hit his bunker in Moscow only a week ago, had agreed to work together to finish an explosive metal bomb, which they simply called 'Atom Bomb'.

Atvar tail stub shook, frightened by what he was seeing right now. The fragmentation of Tosev 3's armed forces was one of their main advantages and now it seems that humans have decided to unite? How by the Emperor was this possible to happen that fast?

The last one was the new Fuhrer of Germany, who first said who horribly sorry he was what his people had done to all the nations around him, and also to his own people, that he was sorry for all the lies in so called racial science the NSdAP had told the German people and what they have caused. To show how sorry he was he promised that after the war was over, Deutschland would retreat to its borders of 1937 and pay a certain amount of reparations to these nations. He also promised that he, as long as he would live, would never allow Nazism to rise again, since it has poisoned the true soul of Deutschland, that they were not a nation of warmongers but a nation of poets, artists and scientists , and he welcomed all the German refugees that have fled the Nazis before and during the war.

In the end it was Winston Churchill again who spoke.

"As a sign of how we united we are now, we and all the other nations in exile have founded the United Nations of Planet Earth and this will be our symbol" He pointed upwards, the camera following. Up there was a flag, with just a single-colored background and a world map, encircled by two branches of what Atvar assumed some sort of Tosevite bushes, but together with these bushes there were also two crossed swords.

"This emblem from now on shall show that we will search nothing more but peace on this planet, but if we are forced to, will also fight for it. Every nation that will fight for the freedom of all humanity can join us. We will try our best to supply you with material and information to fight the aliens.

We shall never surrender."

Atvar snarled at the screen and went off. Kirel was following him.

"My Fleetlord, what are your orders?"

"No orders, nothing has changed. They maybe did an impressive speech but it will not change anything. They will fail. Just like with our previous conquests we will prevail."

"Of course, my Fleetlord."

Atvar rushed into his private room, angry although he didn't knew why he was so angry. They had the upper hand on nearly every continent, it would be only a matter of time.

He walked to his desk and activated the little holographic projector and a Tosevite, who was wearing a full body armor and swinging a sword, appeared. The male monitored the projection a little bit longer, becoming somewhat melancholic while watching it.

* * *

- Somewhere in northern France, 100 meters below the surface -

"An impressive speech gentlemen." the inter-dimensional visitor said. "Although I was surprised that you repeated your "We Shall Fight on the Beaches" speech."

"Well, as far as we know the Race wasn't in the inner solar-system when I held that speech for the first time, and since it was so effective then I thought it would be good to use it again, also to show the Race our confidence to fight till the bitter end."

The politicians and the visitor together with some officers of the British Army and the newly found Armed Forces of the Fourth Republic of France, who were all currently using German and British equipment, where standing in a bunker in the hills near Amiens in northern France that had been finished in just a single day. They had arrived from London on a trawler to not get too much attention by the Race.

They all had watched as the visitor activated his matter-energy converter and the machine had started to suck up the matter like a vacuum cleaner. It looked like a spotlight of blueish light, and each matter it touched vanished into the machine, while somehow at the same time, at the rim of the part where the device did suck up the matter, the remaining matter turned into something that looked similar like concrete, but it was hard as steel.

The bunker was deep below the surface to even withstand a nuclear explosion, It was built like an underground hangar, because of the sheer size of tanks and aircrafts that will soon to be built. In the middle was even a line like on a road, one for the cars that would drive into the bunker to bring the raw matter for the tanks and especially the fuel, which was the easiest to make, and the other one for the empty trucks and the finished tanks and aircrafts to drive outside.

The visitor approached the big metal box that was standing at the very end of the hangar and worked on a little panel for a few minutes.

Suddenly the box cracked open at several points and several spider-like arms erupted from it, looking like some sort of big headless insect now. At the end of the box a door opened and a few smaller boxes on little wheels rolled out, positioning at the side of the machine, some with desks, some with screens. It nearly looked like a bureau.

The visitor walked to the other side and connected his wrist-device with the assembler. They all could feel current in the air, the mustache of Charles de Gaulle rising upwards by the current.

After a few minutes it seems he was ready.

"Okay Gentlemen, let's get started."

The spider-like arms moved forward, the tips splitting into smaller parts, nearly hand-like, coming closer in front of the box, like it wanted to grab something.

"Don't we need any protective goggles or similar gear?" the German Fuhrer asked.

"Nope. There is no dangerous radiation at all, just a bit of electrostatic, but that's it." he said to the officer to calm him down, as he walked towards the group. Then he turned around.

"Computer. Materialize test-object zero-one."

Immediately small beams of light emitted from the tips of the metallic spider legs, Where they crossed, the little particles stayed there. It looked like the machine was drawing the outlines of all parts of a tank, at first it was slow, but it seemed that the machine was just getting started and after not even three minutes there were the outlines of a battle-ready tank. To finish its work the machine moved all its arms around the tank, encircling it, and all 'fingers' started firing bright light at the same time.

All people in the bunker squinted their eyes, but they could still see that the energy was somehow being turned into matter, as if metal was simply poured into the outlines of the tank.  
Then with a final flash, the machine stopped.

Everybody, except for the visitor just gasped. Within not even five minutes he had built a battle ready tank. He went to the machine and jumped at the left sidetrack.

"Gentlemen, I present – the M47 Patton. 90 mm smooth bare gun, together with two .50 BMG and a top speed of about 50 kilometers per hour."

"From which year is this one?" the American Vice President asked.

"This here is the latest version from 1953."

"Don't you have something more advanced for us? I mean, it does look impressive..." the Vice-President ran his hand along the metal of the tracks, "...but 1953 is not that far away."

"I know, but remember the greater the time span from when it would be build from today is, the longer it takes to build it. Imagine it like...a puzzle that is trying to resist to be finished, the same would go for the atoms of this tank." he tapped the metal with his right boot.

"So to make it simple, as I already said at first we will built more advanced infantry weapons and then supply the resistance fighters with them as well. Then we will first stay with the more advanced aircrafts and tanks you already got, or would be able to built in two or three years, like the ME262, the American P-80 and the Gloster Meteor for the simple reason that - the assembler can build nearly one of them in less than two minutes and we really need to hold the Race back to build the more advanced machines."

"What about nuclear weapons? Is your decision set in stone about that?" Molotov asked.

"Yes for several reasons. First I already told you that the assembler is programmed not to build them. Admit it, if it would be possible to build them, you would just build huge amounts of them and try to bomb every Race base on the planet. That would neither be good for you nor for the environment of Earth, it would produce so much radioactive fallout that nobody would be able to live on the planet anymore. And seconds our government sees this as immoral."

"Immoral?" the Vice-president asked, somewhat calmly. "They destroyed vast parts of DC, and also Berlin, and you are talking about immorality? We need these weapons absolutely, to show them that we are able to hurt them, hurt them badly, and the only way to do that are nuclear weapons."

"Sorry but we don't see it like this anymore that immorality justifies a crime. They are people as well, just brainwashed like the Germans have been. So does this justifies to nuke them? Oh and for the nuclear weapons of the Race..."

He was interrupted by sudden bleeping of one of the machines that drove out of the assembler earlier, so he jumped off the tank and walked to the machine at the end of the bunker. But when he was on half his way to the machine, he seemed to have noticed something, maybe a different noise as usual, a different color of the screen. What ever it was he ran to the screen, looking at it with an horrified gaze.

"Shit. Speaking of the devil."

He started hammering onto the keyboard, obviously stressed now.

"Young lad, what happened?" Winston Churchill asked.

But the man did not answer, he was just staring on the screen his fingers going faster and faster as he wrote one line of text after the other.

"Young man, I asked you something so if you may..."

"Just shut the fuck up! If I don't succeed now, Melbourne and Sydney will be two radioactive craters in about 9 minutes so keep your mouth shut now!" he yelled at the politician.

The old man's eyes widened in shock. Was the Race...gonna use nuclear weapons on these cities?

"By Jove. Please not." the politician weakly groaned.

"Sorry Gentlemen, but the Commander is busy right now. If you have any questions please ask me."

A little metal sphere floated from the bureau like assembly, everybody stepping back.

"What is this!?" the French General yelled out, while the German Fuhrer pointed with his Mauser pistol at the device.

"I am sorry, gentlemen. I am the contact device of the Nano-Assembler 01, a semi-autonomous Artificial Intelligence. If you have any questions, just ask them and I will try to answer them as best as possible."

Still stunned by the sudden appearance of this weird device, the Fuhrer still pointing at the thing, Churchill cleared his throat and asked.

"What is happening right now, what is our visitor doing?" Right now he felt the same fear like he felt during the first world war when he visited the trenches near the frontline.

"He is just trying to hack into the Race-computer network and plant a computer-virus into their system that would disable all their nuclear weapons. To make it more understandable to you, hacking means that he is trying to establish a secret connection with their calculating machines, whichare nearly all linked together and they control their space ships, their guided missiles and also their nuclear bombs. A computer virus is simply a program that will cause harm to a certain computer, in this case, the Race computers. Hopefully he will be able to finish this task within the next five minutes."

A little screen lit up in the air between the metal sphere and the officers. It looked like a radar screen and two objects were shown, flying right over the middle of Australia, targeting two points in the southeast of the continent, each one marked with a weird yellow and black sign.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that each of these fighter-bombers carries a 100 kt bomb, which will be dropped on Sydney and Melbourne in about three minutes."

"100 kt? What does that mean?" the British politician asked confused.

"It means that each bomb has the explosive power of about the equivalent of 100 000 tons of TNT. If the Race will be able to drop them on the cities about 75 to 80 percent of all people there will die."

The knees of the old politician were shaking, the knuckles of his fingers all white as he tightened his grip on his cane.

He looked at the visitor who was frantically typing commands, hoping, wishing, and praying he will succeed.

The two dots on the screen were now getting closer and closer to the cities, a countdown when the bombs will be released appeared on the side of the screen.

50...

49...

42...

30...

"JESUS YES! I did it."

"REALLY? This...virus is in their control system now?" the old man asked.

"Yes. The download did just finish. From now on all their nuclear weapons are duds. I also uploaded a virus that renders all their cruise missiles useless. Unfortunately it is impossible to do the same with their tanks, jets and their guided missiles and helicopters, since they are not connected with their computer network."

In that moment the screen of the sphere blinked several times as the two bombers arrived at their targets, but instead of a sign for destruction, there were just the words – 'No nuclear explosion detected.'

For Winston Churchill it felt like the weight of the world has fallen from his shoulders. He had already seen all the citizens of this cities dieing and now they were safe.

"What about the bombs? Can the authorities there retrieve them? We could maybe use them against their bases in Australia." Claus von Staufenberg asked

"What I don't understand..." the French General said "...is why the lizards wasted so many of their bombs at the beginning of their campaign, simply detonating them high in the sky."

The interdimensional visitor tried to explain.

"When you explode a nuclear bomb at high altitude it creates high-velocity-electrons, or simply said it charges the atmosphere to a certain degree which causes every electronic device to fail. It is like when a fuse fails because of too high voltage. But fortunately your technology is not that far developed yet, tough I guess..."

He stopped talking, his stare blank as if he suddenly realized something.

"Gods damn these stupid idiots!"

"What? Who? The Race? Molotov asked.

"No I meant those eggheads in their ivory towers in my universe. They simply didn't think about that possibility."

"Please don't talk in riddles." one of the Generals that was with them asked.

"What I wanted to say, that they simply didn't think about the possibility that we could use the same tactic against the Race. If we are able to produce enough nuclear bombs and put them on a missile, like the German V2, we can crush the Race's devices. Their communication, their control systems, their tanks, helicopters, jet-fighters all will be useless if we would detonate nukes high in the atmosphere when they are active, while the human machinery will still be able to fight."

The faces of all the officers and politicians lit up at the thought how the aircrafts of the Race would simply fall from the sky and their tanks would simply stop driving on the battlefield.

"What is the V2?" the vice-president asked.

"It is a German ballistic missile, developed by Wernher von Braun and first used in 1944. It has a range of about 300 kilometers and can reach an altitude of 120 kilometers with a speed of nearly 5000 kilometers per hour, and most importantly it can carry cargo of about 1 ton, which is about the size of the first nuclear bombs. If he, Robert Goddard and Sergei Koroljow could work together they could maybe even develop rockets that would be able to destroy their starships in orbit.

You have to know that about a bit more of a decade after the war, that several power already developed so called intercontinental-ballistic-missiles with a range of over 10 000 kilometers but they need a lot of infrastructure, more than even I can built with my mass-energy converter in the time we have. So we would need a mobile version, like the Russian Topol missile, and they could surely reverse-engineer and develop one with the blue-prints from the future."

"So you are suggesting that we should now fight the lizards and hold them back as long as possible with out weapons from the early 50s and late 40s, while our scientists would work together and develop rockets that could destroy their star-ships, then detonate the nuclear bombs high in the atmosphere and then attack with the most advanced weapons we have stockpiled then, do I understand that right?" Molotov concluded.

He didn't feel very good at the thought that the scientists of his fatherland would have to work together with capitalistic Americans and Germans. But beggars can't be choosers, it probably had to be done, he just had to make sure that if won't fall back onto their great fatherland, at least not immediately.

"Yes. That is exactly what our plan is. I will bring all the assemblers to their final destinations as fast as possible and we will start producing our first weapons. So gentlemen what are we waiting for, let's do it."

* * *

- In oribt around Tosev 3 (Earth) -

The Fleetlord tapped with his clawed fingers on the desk, obviously angered.

"What was the problem with these bombs? What happened?"

The officers and scientists that have gathered in the control room murmured with each other, no one wanted to start.

"I ASKED - WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM WITH THESE BOMBS? CAN IT HAPPEN AGAIN?!" the fleetlord hissed out, some officers stepping back slightly by that outbreak.

Then one of them stepped forward and said.

"My fleetlord...we don't know what has caused the malfunction of the explosive metal bombs. We are still investigating what happened. We are currently checking each bomb for mechanic failures, but haven't found anything yet." he lowered his eye turrets

"What about the bombs, is it possible to to retrieve them?" he snarled at his officers. They had already lost the bulk of their explosive-metal-bombs since the Germans had been able to destroy two of their star-ships, 56th Emperor Jossano and 67th Emperor Sohrheb in Poland with an artillery-gun that was just insanely big.

"Unfortunately...we weren't unable to do so. We sent in a group of helicopters to retrieve them but...the resistance forces in Australia had been able to shoot down about one quarter of them before we had even been able to get near the city. I fear they had already been able to get these bombs and are hiding them now at an unknown place."

Atvar hissed at the officer again, who just lowered his eyes but didn't step back. The commander started walking in circles, thinking about his options.

"I understand. Continue the investigations, until we know that we are able to use them again safely. Until then we will not use them. We cannot risk it that the big-uglies will get their hands on more of our technology. The bases in Australia should also be set on high alert. It may be possible that the Tosevites bring the bombs near one of our bases and maybe destroy them." he told the group.

Without another word he left the group to obey his orders.

'Oh those Tosevites' he thought to himself 'those damn, inferior beings. How much more trouble will they cause?'


	3. Oh, those Tosevites

-Orbit around Tosev 3 (Earth) -

Fleetlord Atvar was looking again at the little hologram of the Tosevite, who was nothing more than a barbarian to his eyes. Not that the Tosevites were now civilized, but this hologram showed him an even more barbaric one, wearing pelts and a simply iron sword. The Tosevites his men were facing now were different, barbarians still, but different.

Who would have thought that something like this could ever happen, that a species could develop so fast. In the thousands of years the Race has traveled through outer space, they have conquered the world of the Rabotevs and the Hallesi, and both had developed at the same slow pace as the Race.

But the Tosevites smashed all their theories what kind of species would develop to become the dominant species of a planet, and also how fast they would evolve. Jet powered killercrafts, landcruisers, ships that were large enough to house an entire group of killercrafts, to act as a mobile base, they even were at the early stages of building explosive metal bombs, something they need to stop at all costs.

At the beginning of their conquest they were successful, really successful. The Race conquered nearly the entire southern hemisphere, and large parts of the northern one. But the Tosevites have been at war against each other while the Race invaded, so they had so large amounts of weapons, which, even while they were primitive, inflicted large losses to their stocks of landcruisers and troop-carriers and killed many of their brave males.

And now they have even united themselves against them. Just seven days ago the most powerful empires and not-empires have started to coordinate their attacks against their lines. They were still drawn back by the Race's forces, but at a much slower pace now.

Atvar's head hurt from even just thinking about this. Their losses were already going up in the millions, while during the previous conquests they did not even loose 100 males. It was just horrible.

He yawned, and looked at the hologram again. He had not been asleep the whole night, and instead watched the hologram or on occasions also the planet below him. From orbit he could not see the battlefields and somehow this soothed his stressed nerves. It all looked so peaceful and calm. If the Big-Uglies would have surrendered when he ordered the destruction of Berlin and Washington DC it would already be peaceful.

But it was not.

The sudden humming of the intercom interrupted his thoughts.

"What is it?" he snarled at the loudspeaker. His mood had been better. But that was a long time ago.

"My fleetlord. One of the shuttles with samples of Tosevite military technology arrived about one hour ago and we finished our first examination. The results are...frightening. Please...you have to see it for yourself."

He squinted his eye-turrets. It just seemed to get worse and worse.

- in the cargo bay of the Bannership in orbit around Tosev 3 -

"What do we have here?" He looked at a table with various weapons. They were attached with small straps so they would not fly around in the zero-G environment.

Ttomalss pointed at two bulky weapons. One was partly made of wood at the back, and had a long bent magazine, the other one seemed to be partially made of some sort of plastic. They were large, but that was normal, nearly every weapon that the Tosevites had was larger than their own ones.

"This one here" Ttomalss pointed at the one with the bend magazine "seems to be the new standard infantry weapon of the SSSR. It is...frightening, that much I can tell you. In the last few days we got more and more reports of Tosevites all over the SSSR and also other not-empires that border to the SSSR, were using this sort of weapon. The range is far greater than what they had before, the ammunition is larger and therefore much more powerful, it can penetrate the body armor of our soldiers with ease, and the cadence is something between 400 to 500 shots a minute, if there was a magazine that large. Until now we only have been able to catch a single Tosevite, who was using this weapon.

It may look similar to the Deutsche assault rifle 'Sturmgewehr 44', which we have seen been used by some Deutschlanders, but the soldier insisted that this 'Kalaschnikowa' was developed independently by their own engineers.

The other is the new standard weapon of the Deutschlanders. Of this weapon we don't even have an idea what they call it. The effective range is about three times as far as the one of previous weapons of them, and also like the other one has higher cadence and firepower.

I cannot explain this. These weapons...resemble our own ones much more than they should. Within just a few weeks the Tosevites seemed to have made a technological leap of several years maybe even decades. "

The fleetlord looked at the weapon cautiously, then he picket up a single bullet that was attached to the magazine at the side of the weapon.

"Can these bullets penetrate the hulls of our troopcarriers and landcruisers?" the fleetlord asked, looking at the bullet.

"Of the landcruisers, no. But we have reports of Tosevites using them as sniper rifles too, with very high effectiveness. We have lost dozens of landruiser commanders to these new weapons, because they were shot when they were looking for Tosevite resistance by looking out of their hatches. I suggest to prohibit this tactic from now on, we cannot risk to loose anymore commanders."

"What are these other weapons?" The fleetlord squinted his eye-turrets even more, looking at them with both his eye turrets. He already had an idea what they were for.

"My fleetlord this here is unfortunately a very effective weapon against our landcruisers and troopcarriers. It is a rocket propelled grenade with a shaped charge. Even while it cannot penetrate most parts of their armor, it is very effective by destroying their tracks and wheels, and also their sensors, which renders them useless until we can repair them.

The Deutschlanders and also the Americans have already started to simply built larger versions of their own anti-landcruiser rockets, which are even more effective than this counterpart here. The problem is, they also started to use them against our helicopters, which is a very successful tactic unfortunately. I would suggest to use the gunships only in areas we already pacified to suppress possible uprisings."

The Fleetlord still held the single bullets in his hand, watching it against the light above him, as if he could get to know how it was built.

"Any more 'good' news?"

The speech of Winston Churchill and the other leaders of Tosev 3 surprisingly had some effect around the entire planet. In many places where his radio broadcast had been heard people started uprising in the hope of total independence from any colonial reign. Thousands of small towns were now under control of the humans again, but only the towns, no big cities or their surroundings. Atvar had decided to leave them. Should they try to conquer more land, they would be crushed. He gave them a week at best before the would surrender again.

Ttomalss gulped down, and looked at his notes. Normally he could bring up the information from his memory, but there were so many changes lately that he could not keep track.

"We...we are getting in more reports that both the Deutsche and the Britainish have started to build more of their primitive jet-powered killercrafts. Even though they are primitive, in large numbers they could cause heavy damage to our troops.

There are also rumors of totally new landcruisers from all over Deutschland, the SSSR and the USA. From each not-empire we have a single report of Tosevite landcruisers luring smaller groups of our landcruisers into traps and...totally annihilated these groups, only five males from all three incidents managed to escape somehow.

They reported to have seen landruisers that are larger, faster, better armed and with much bigger guns than other types. Even though the groups resisted fiercely and destroyed many of them, they managed to destroy entire groups of our landcruisers. We got only this picture here of one of these Tosevite landcruisers."

Ttomalss handed the fleetlord a piece of paper with a blurred pic of a landcruiser. It seemed that is was made by a high flying killercraft. Sloped armor, large gun, and other traits that were not part of Tosevite landcruisers only a few weeks ago.

"And there are rumors of new Wonder-weapons the Deutsche Fuhrer has announced over radio to fight us. Some of our soldiers have shown first signs of anxiety to fight against them."

The fleetlord's tail-stump wagged in an angry manner. How in the name of the Emperor was this possible?

He looked at Ttomalss again, with just one eye-turret.

"Next time you find any trace of change in Tosevite technology you tell me immediately, no matter what day time or what I am doing. Don't examine it first, but tell me as soon as you got knowledge of it."

He moved out of the cargo bay and to the bridge of the ship, to look for any changes on the front-lines. The Tosevites were still resisting. Parts of Atvar could not help but to be impressed by their stubbornness.

* * *

-Somewhere in the Harz-mountains, Germany -

"Gentlemen...to be totally serious...I am impressed." the interdimensional visitor said.

He looked at the Leopard 1 tank and still could barely believe it. The German engineers truly managed to build a tank that was way beyond anything that has been built yet.

"Well, we would not have been able to build it without the blueprints you gave us. And still some things are not as effective as it should be, because of our limited capacity to build this sort of modern technology.

It is a marvelous machine. I still cannot understand though why we did wait so long after the war to build something so effective and beautiful."

"I already explained the time-line of my dimension two times to you, I will not do it a third time."

The nano-assemblers couldn't build anything that was beyond the year 1961, so it was decided that they would build now first the weapons they needed to hold the Race at bay, then build the best weapons that were possible to assemble, while the human engineers would start to build weapons and other technology that was beyond that date in the normal factories with the blueprints their visitor gave them, like the Leopard 1 or the M60 Patton.

All over the world the nano-assemblers have first build about several 10 million G3s, AK47s and other assaults rifles, and of course RPGs and similar anti-tank weapons and enough ammunition to build a mountain from it. Parts would be smuggled into Race held territory with submarines, but the most part will be teleported into towns and cities all over the planet by the visitor.

Behind him the assembly line rattled constantly with boxes full of ammunition and new weapons, ready to be used against the Race, and the flashes of the nano-assmblers lit up the cave.

"Have the first stocks of guided missiles reached their target?" the visitor asked.

"As far as we know yes. We already have several ME 262s, Glosters Meteors, F-86s and Mig 15s equipped with the first Sidewinder missiles. I hope we can destroy at least some jets of the lizzards with them. "

"Don't worry, even if we will not destroy as many as we hope to do, the fact that we have now guided missiles too, and we even have counter-measurements against their missiles, will shake their confidence. Believe me, we will win this war."

* * *

- Somewhere over North-West Germany -

Flight-leader Dreek looked at the scenery below him. He had just raided a human city again, and again his group did not experience any noticeable resistance. The two killercrafts that tried to intercept them did not even come close to them, they were simply shot down by his radar-guided missiles.

"And another victory for the Empire." he could here his wingmate say over the radio.

"True. To me it is unintelligible why those primitives did not already surrender to us."

"They do not because they are primitives. What did you expect from them? Besides this is much better that we can actually use our killercrafts in a real fight. Not like during the last conquest where the pilots were rarely used at all." Muzzel lamented over the radio.

"Again truth."

Suddenly he noticed four dots on his radar. They were fast, much faster than the previous machines they had shot down. But it was nothing to be afraid of, they would be go down as fast as the other ones.

"Muzzel, prepare for 'battle'." Dreek said, emiting a hiss, that was the equivalent of a Tosevite laugh, that to his ear-holes sounded like a bark of an animal he has seen here on Tosev 3. That would be nearly too easy.

Suddenly without warning he could hear the bleeping of the missile-warner over the radio.

"Flight-leader Dreek, I have something locked on me. Trying to evade."

They broke the formation and flew into different directions each. He could see the missile now. It was fast and coming directly from the group of Tosevite killercrafts. The first one missed, but he could already several more spots coming towards them.

"Flight-leader Dreek, several more missiles are on my tail-stump. I cannot shake them off, bailing out!" he yelled and just a second later he was outside his killercraft, which was hit by two missiles just a few seconds later.

Dreek snarled angrily as his wingmates killercraft went up in flames. He re-aimed his machine behind the enemy killercrafts and locked on all four machines with his missiles and shot them away.

White trails of smoke erupted from their tails as they moved towards their aims. In just a few more seconds all of them would be gone. But then, without warning three of the missiles changed direction and aimed to a point slightly below the hostile killercrafts and exploded there. The last missile hit one of the machines but he could see that the pilot was able to bail out too.

For the first time he could now see the machines clearly. The were primitive. Two jet engines attached to the underside of their wings, normal wings that were swept backwards, instead of modern delta wings. He could also see that the missiles they used were attached to the belly of their machines, and not to their wings. It simply did not look right to his eye turrets.

Again he locked his last two missiles on them and fired. While they flew towards their targets, he prayed that they would hit. He could see that the machines discharged something, it looked like metal dust or similar. And again the missiles changed their course and instead of hitting the machines they flew towards that metal dust and exploded without doing any harm to the Tosevite machines.

He tried to lock on tosevite killercrafts with his guns but suddenly they slowed down abruptly and he overshot the enemy group. Then he could hear the radar-warner in his own cockpit and he saw the missiles coming towards him, there were four of them. He pulled the lever and increased his speed to outmaneuver them.

Three missiles missed but the fourth missiles found its target.

The slam knocked the lizard nearly out, if felt like he flew straight on into a mountain. At first he did not know what happened. He thought the missile just scraped him, but when he looked at the left wing, he nearly catapulted himself out of the cockpit.

There was a missile sticking our of the wing. It has penetrated right from below and he could see sparks from the electronics that were hanging out of his machine, the head of the missile pointing at him directly. The missile obviously did now explode, but what if it did now? He could bail out now but he was over enemy territory.

After a few seconds of thought the decisions was made by the Tosevite machines when they started firing with their guns at the killercraft pilot. He noticed again that he was locked on, something that has never been happening before.

He pushed the lever and flew off at full speed, leaving the Tosevite machines behind him, the enemy missile still in its place in his wing.

* * *

- Race airbase in central Poland -

"Explain yourself. Why did interrupt your mission?"

Dreek somehow has managed to survive the flight without neither setting the machine on fire, nor did the missile explode.

He was still shacking from the stress during the flight, always the fear that the missile might explode any moment. And now he was even more stressed, not just because of the fact that he had to explain to his superior but also from the cold weather he had to endure. He was standing outside the hangar, where his machine and the Tosevite missile were examined and the cold weather of the Polish winter did not help him.

"Superior Sir. As I already said our mission was successful . We were able to destroy the Tosevite depots but on our way back we were intercepted by several Tosevite killercrafts. They were jet-powered and were even using guided missiles. My wing-mate was shot down as we tried to evade them. I fired back but the big-uglies were using some sort of counter-devices. How it works I don't know but it made the missiles change their course. I was barely able to fly back because of that missile in my wing..."

"...and you did a very good job in bringing your machine back to us." the pilot heard a very familiar voice saying. He turned around and saw a hologram of his fleetlord and instantly he lowered his eye-turrets.

"My fleetlord." He just said and held his eye turrets lowered.

"Thanks to you we have gained knowledge of this threat. Our scientists and engineers will now examine this missile so we can hopefully built our own counter-devices." The hologram looked at the commander of the base.

"Base commander, transfer this brave pilot to another base, somewhere with better climatic conditions, maybe Arabia. He truly deserves it."

The hologram vanished and the base commander just hissed at the pilot.

"You are lucky that the fleetlord showed his mercy to you, because I would have punished you for your cowardice, running away from the battle, instead of fighting the big-uglies."

He plodded away and left a pretty perplexed Dreek behind.

At least at his new base he would not have to deal with this base commander anymore.

The it struck him. Arabia? That peninsula, that resembled Home so much that it was nearly a copy of it? He could barely believe his luck.


	4. We shall never surrender

- Warsaw, Poland, Tosev 3 (Earth) -

Mordechaj Anielewicz looked down at the streets of Warsaw. He looked down, the streets still filled with rubble and destroyed vehicles, watching how the people slowly began to remove the damage done by the Nazis during the last few years of this war. For the first time in years, people had not to be afraid of anything.

There were no bombers in the sky that attacked the city, there were no police raids to find hidden Jews or resistance fighters, no secret police, no Wehrmacht or or SS...just Poles...and of course the Race. He saw two tanks that the Race simple called Troop-carriers rolling through the streets and around a corner, out of his sight.

"Just look at them. They do not hurt us, in fact they help us to rebuilt this city. They liberated us from German and Soviet occupation. They saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people from certain death in those extermination-camps. And now you just appear here and ask us to deceive them, do I understand you right?"

He looked back at the strange man with his black armored full-body-suit, the helmet under his arm. He suddenly appeared out of nowhere in their room, just a whirring noise, then a bright light and suddenly he was standing among them. Their weapons proofed to be useless against this person as it seems he possessed some sort of magnetic field that prevented their bullets from hitting him. But he had no intention to hurt them, he said that in fact he was a visitor from another universe and a messenger of this new organization, the UNPE.

"I know you are facing a difficult decision my Mister Anielewicz." He walked over to him, two soldiers of the Jewish militia carefully watching him to overwhelm him with muscle strength if necessary.

This strange man, that did not even tell him his name, looked down too, watching the scene below. Then he looked up and overlooked the scenery of the buildings around them, many of them were missing their roofs or were damaged even more.

"It is just interesting, you know? I have never been to Warsaw, although it my time-line it would just take about half an hour to come from Paris, where I live in my universe, to Warsaw. Only now that I am in a different universe I am here and can watch the undestroyed, original city."

"Undestroyed?" one of the militia-men asked in disbelief, asking if this man had lost his mind.

"Yes, compared to the Warsaw of my universe this one here is pretty much intact. You have to know at the end of World-war Two, the city was destroyed, and I mean totally destroyed. About 95 percent of all buildings were turned into rubble and when the Nazis abandoned the city because of the onrushing Red Army, there were just about five-hundred to one-thousand inhabitants left inside the city, the rest had fled. After the war the entire city had to be reconstructed after old paintings and postal-cards."

"Only just more reason to support the Race."

The interdimensional visitor looked at the streets for a few more seconds on the streets, than again in the eyes of the leader of the Jewish militia.

"And what about the people in other cities, in other nations? I know that the Polish people have strong antipathy against all your surrounding nations, and I cannot blame you. What happened to you was horrible. But I also think that from all nations you can understand my arguments the best."

Mordechaj Anielewicz walked through the room and sat onto a leather chair, dirty and full of dust, but he did not mind.

"Okay. Bring on your arguments and try to convince me."

"Sure. My main argument is your nation itself. Poland did not exist for 123 years, ever since it was divided among the three empires of Austria, Prussia and Russia. Each nation oppressed your people there, and tried to eradicate your culture, language and so forth...pretty much what the Race will try to do with the people here on Earth. The languages we are talking now will be prohibited, teachers will be not allowed to teach a lot of things and what will be important for you too...they will prohibit any sort of religious freedom, or at least try to make it really difficult. Only their own Emperor-Worshipping will be allowed and every sort of open religious practice will be prevented, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, all will be prohibited.

Is this really what you want for your people? I know that you have had a hard time ever since your nation came to be right after World War One. The Polish Soviet war, the distrust of the Polish Goi and then all the atrocities done by the Nazis with the concentration camps and so forth.

You know that the Race uses Poland as a staging point for their conquest into western Europe and into the East. If you, and also the other military groups here in Poland would help us and join the UNPE we could relieve a lot of forces for other parts of the world and end this war faster."

"I see what you mean, and I also agree with you in some points. But view it from our perspective: What choice do we have? The two most powerful nations on our borders cannot be trusted as the Ribbentrop-Molotow-Pact has shown."

"Oh, with this matter I can help. You know how this works in politics, a little bit of stick and a little bit of carrot. Both the USSR and Germany will grant your nation full independence and also and create a fully-DMZ along your borders. Germany agreed to it, since I could convince the Allies not to occupy Germany after this war ended. But of course there will be checks of their armed forces afterward and all war-criminals will be treated by an international panel within Germany. And the USSR will get back their Amber-Room, which the Nazis had stolen. Only know where it is, since all officers that knew about the where-about were killed in the nuclear-blast on Berlin. I And I made it pretty clear to both of them that if they do not comply I will shut down the factories that are producing their weaponry right now."

"Okay, I see a lot of carrots and also some even stronger sticks. But how do you want them to follow them after the Race has been defeated? You said that you would send back these...Nano-Assemblers back into your universe after this war is over. So how would you be able to protect us then?"

The two militiamen seemed to get irritated slowly but surely. This man was strange. How could he even negotiate with these two war-mongering countries?

"I must admit that this was the toughest part, but I managed to do convince the Western Allies that when this war has ended, that France, the UK and the USA will send 200 000 soldiers plus equipment to your nation to help you defend your nation. They will establish several bases all over your country to act as a deterrent against any Soviet or German threat. I know you do not like them after the left you behind during the first weeks in this war, but this is the best I can offer you. And if you will help us, you will be in possession of all the advanced weaponry and technology of the Race, you would be one of the most powerful nations in Europe then."

For several more minutes the leader of the Jewish resistance did not say anything. Then he stood up and walked to the window again, just watching the city. Then he said:

"I cannot make a decision, at least not yet...just try to understand me, I am not a dictator and I cannot force my militias to suddenly fight against the Race. Many of them admire them for helping us against the Germans. It would simply be not possible, at least not right now. I also have to talk with the leaders of the other resistance groups. But I will promise you that I will not tell the Race command about this chat here. I have to think about all this...about all the consequences this would have if we would join you...I mean...how can we ever trust any nation again...Germany, France, the UK...?"

The visitor just walked over and gave Mordechaj Anielewicz two books. One was titled 'The Franco-German Friendship'. The other one 'Europe – From war to peace' .

"Just read this and you will see it is possible. France and Germany, have fought so often and so hard against each other again and again...and despite this, they managed to settle it all afterward and become true friends."

The military leader looked at the book in his hand disbelievingly. "Hard to believe."

"Okay...I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to leave. The UNPE and several multinational research teams are waiting for me. It is unlikely that we will see again before this war had ended. But remember this: Within the next two months the UNPE will try to use the winter-months to launch a global attack. If you want to join us until then, we will try to help you. But if you should not...well just to let you know this would also make the other agreements irrelevant. You still remember the code I suggested to let us know that you want to join us?"

The militia-leader just nodded.

"Good. I hope you will make the right decision. Just one more thing...'Warszawo walcz', gentlemen."

Before anybody could say something else the man vanished in a bright flash and everyone in the room had to cover their eyes and three seconds later when the flash died down the visitor was gone.

* * *

Secret underground base in the Appalachian Mountains, United States of America, Earth (Tosev 3)

The sudden whirring sound in the cavern indicated that the visitor was about to appear and just a few seconds later in a bright flash the interdimensional visitor appeared out of nowhere, just like he had done so many times before.

He shivered at the cool air that surrounded him suddenly, even through his suit he could feel the cold air, and looked around. He saw a man coming towards him and the computer in his suit told him that it was Major General James Lawton Collins, department director for administrative and supply troops (Army Service Forces). The cavern was lit up every few seconds by the Nano-Assembler right at their side. Right now it looked like it was producing some prefabricated parts of a submarine.

"Good to see you Sir." He offered the visitor his hand who replied the gesture and they shook hands. "It is an honor to see you Sir. Without you our planet would surely already be overrun by these scaly bastards."

"Thanks, Major General." The visitor groaned and took off his helmet with a fast move.

"Everything alright Sir?"

"Yes...just had not much sleep lately. You know I have supplied pretty much every rebel-group on the planet now with assault rifles and enough explosives to blow up all of New York City twice. And then also the negotiations with several groups to prepare them for the big assault...You know I have been trying to convince the various militia leaderships in Warsaw, that they should join us too. They have access to a a certain degree of the advanced weaponry of the Race right now and they could easily overwhelm them, since member of the Race have no concept of treachery as far as we could tell in my universe." He sighed deeply. "I just hope that they will make the right decision. "

"Only time will answer us this question."

"Sure, you are right. At least the international research teams are getting along pretty good. Doctor von Braun, comrade Sergei Pawlowitsch Koroljow and Mister Goddard seem to get along quite good to develop a land-based mobile rocket that could be launched against their spaceships. Especially Goddard is really happy, after I told him he was suffering from throat cancer. He should be back to full health in a few weeks, now that he had his surgery."

"That are good news Sir."

"Just a question Major General, have you been able to distribute all the televisions to the public television parlors on the east and west coast and also Canada? The people there surely need some encouragement in these times. The authorities in Europe, the USSR and Japan half just finished about half of all parlors yet."

"Yes, we already distributed more than five-thousand of them all over the country and our propaganda-departments are already working with your computers on some movies. But...I have to ask you for help about some other issues."

The visitor just sighed again but then looked into the eyes of the Major General.

"Sure, where is the problem?"

"Food, Sir. The Race has taken great parts of the Mid-West, the breadbasket of our nation and in the last few months, before winter started, we were not able to harvest much of the crops there so I wanted to ask you if it would be possible to...well to make food with this machine." He pointed at the flashing machine behind the visitor who had just finished its work on the submarine-part which was then loaded on a large truck and then is started on another war-machine.

"Yes, this is possible. But...I have to tell you it does not taste as good as real food. We never managed to reproduce the quality of food that was grown on a field or bred on a farm. But beggars cannot be chosen, can they So I should make some field rations for you then? How were they called...C- and K-Rations?"

"Yeah, they would help a lot, but...couldn't you maybe make something else, I mean A-rations? A lot of our soldiers and a great deal of our people would like to get something else but stone-hard bread or similar. It would truly help our moral if they could get something that at least looks and tastes like it was fresh."

The visitor just nodded and walked over to the machine and waited until it was finished with the Huey-helicopter, armed with two M2 machine canons at the doors, two remote-controlled M134 Miniguns, two rocket pods with early versions of the unguided hydra rockets and a chin-mounted M75 grenade launcher.

"Oh – my – god! This thing looks like a flying tank." The major general wandered over to the machine, watching it in awe while several workers began to load it onto another truck, ready to bring it to one of many secret bases along the east coast. Each of them has also been provided with primitive training-simulators so they the USAF would have enough pilots to fight in the final battle in a few months.

While the Major General looked after the truck with the Huey under a camouflage sheet the visitor had already started a new program to produce first the various rations and then the food for the hungry population. It should be easy to produce, easy to store, while having a healthy amount of nutrition. He programmed the assembler also this way that the food would also have more vitamins and other nutritions it would normally not contain to compensate the lack of other food.

Then with a flash it began its program. After less ten ten seconds the arms of the machine retreated and on the podium where normally the war-machines would be built was...

"A hamburger?" The Major General looked at it in disbelief, just as several other workers did too. He walked over, knelt down and took it carefully off the ground. He had heard that the visitor said that if something was not meant to be yet an object would simply fall apart into its atoms, so he feared that the tasty looking burger would just crumble to carbon dust.

But it stayed intact. After taking in its scent he carefully took a bite and tasted its flavor.

"Well...it is nothing compared to the stuff my grandma cooked for me. But this is better than most things people had to eat lately."

"Okay. It's hamburgers for you Americans then, together with C- and K-Rations." The visitor smirked at the thought that he may have started the fast-food culture several decades earlier now.

* * *

In orbit around Tosev 3 (Earth) onboard the bannership 127th Emperor Hetto 

Fleetlord Atvar yawned as he slowly drifted into the command station. Lately he was not able to get much sleep because of all the problems the Tosevites were causing. And now that he got a few hours of sleep, he was woken again. But it was his own fault.

He had given the order to call him immediately in the case of strange or surprising incidents, no matter what he was doing, which had caused a lot of callings since the Tosevites seemed to come up with a new tactic or a new weapon every few days.

He yawned again when he drifted to the computer-console.

"What new technology did the Tosevites now bring up, Kirrel?" he groaned at his officer, one eye-turret on the screen, the other one nearly closed.

He was so frustrated lately that he started to ignore the protocols. Sometimes he simply wished that he would have never hatched. Or at least that the conquest would have started fifteen years earlier. Then it would have been nearly as easy as during the previous conquests.

"My Fleetlord, we have tried to destroy a supply base of one of the Tosevite landcruisers on the East-Coast of the United States of America, but...out of the twelve Killercrafts only two survived, the other ones were destroyed by ground-based missiles."

Now the Fleetlord was awake instantaneously. Both eye-turrets were fixed on Kirrel now.

"Give me the details." the Fleetlord demanded.

"It shall be done my Fleetlord." He pressed several buttons and a hologram appeared in front of them.

"While the killerkrafts had been on their way to this supply base on the East-Coast of the United States of America we noticed nothing unusual, it was even more calm then usual, since no piston-driven killerkrafts tried to intercept them. Then all of a sudden the pilots noticed several strong radar-signatures from the ground, hidden inside the forests so it seems. "While he explained the hologram showed the Fleet-lord an animation of the scene.

"Only a few seconds later several missiles which had obviously been radar guided were launched from several hidden positions that were placed around the source of the radar-signatures. Already the first wave destroyed half of this group and unfortunately many of our pilots did not realize what happened, until it was too late. The remaining pilots tried to evade but it was futile, the missiles simply shot them down. And this was not the only incident. During the last two hours we experienced similar incidents in eastern Deutschland, northern France, the center of the SSSR and also during an attack on the capital of the Empire of Japan. I suspect that the Tosevites are right now constructing more of these anti-killercraft bases near their largest cities to prevent future attacks. "

The Fleet-lord looked at the hologram for a few more seconds then he looked back at this trusted officer. This was a really serious problem, air-superiority was one of the key-points of their conquest.

"Do you have any ideas how we can deal this new threat?"

"Yes, I do my Fleetlord. It seems that these missiles need an external source for guidance. They do not emit radar on their own. I would suggest that we split our attack groups into smaller ones. When one group is aimed at with these hidden radar-bases, another group, which is flying behind the first group, could track the source of the radar and destroy it with our radar-guided missiles. This way we would render their missiles useless."

"So...the first group would act as an decoy then? I would like to prevent it that we loose more of our killerkrafts and brave pilots." Atvar said while he thought about the pros and cons of this tactic.

"I know this sounds...unusual... but we are dealing with an unusual enemy. By the way I read a report of this incident in northern Deutschland about two weeks or so ago, one of the first incidents where we were attacked by jet-powered Tosevite killerkrafts with radar-guided missiles. I asked our engineers if we could possible reproduce this technology that diverted our own missiles and he said it could be possible, since he seem to understand how it works. But it would need some time and careful testing."

Time, it always needed time, that was the way you would normally produce a working technology or machine. But now they were in the midst of a war and their enemy was slowly, really slowly gaining the upper hand. This had to be prevented at all costs.

"Tell these engineers that they shall begin with their research. And I demand results soon, very soon." he ordered Kirrel.

"It shall be done, my Fleetlord." Kirrel said.

"Good. Now..." He was interrupted by the sudden noise of an incoming transmission.

"My Fleetlord" one of the communication officers said "we are again receiving strong audio-visual transmissions. They are stronger than the last time and...they seem to be in color too."

"Show it!" he weakly said. And again a new technology. The few last times the transmissions were just in plain gray, black and white. And now they should be in color? Their own development took several thousand years to achieve this, he could simply not understand how the Tosevites could do this so fast.

The hologram lit up and again it showed them a flat screen. The scenery was a desert-like environment, lots of sand dunes and only little vegetation. To the member of the Race in the command station it looked really inviting, nearly like home. Then they heard a weird music, it was definitely caused by several string instruments. Then other instruments joined the strange music, instruments he had never heard before he had come to Tosev 3. He had seen their own reports of Tosevites using strange shaped instruments made out of metal and wood and they blew air through it with their mouths to produce interesting noises. The Race has never invented such instruments because of their anatomy they would not be able to use them like a Tosevite would do.

After they listened a few more seconds to this strange music a mechanic sound started. He recognized it immediately. It was the rattling sound of the tracks of a landcruiser.

From the left suddenly a landcruiser appeared, but it was not one of their own, it was a Tosevite one. It was large, slopped armor and a very dangerous looking gun. The camera moved more to the left and showed more and more of them appearing. A line of words appeared below the scene. It was translated by their computers and replaced it with the elegant letters of the language of the Race. It read 'Battle for Alexandria'. He did not recognize any of the landcruisers, it must be a totally new type. Several explosions erupted between the war-machines and they moved their turrets, aiming at something behind their viewer. Then they started firing.

The scene changed to a group of several large ships. Two of them were these large ones that were housing killerkrafts and acted as mobile bases. What shocked him a bit that one on the airfield was showing the flag of the United Stated of America, the other one the flag of the Empire of Japan. He knew that these two have been fighting just a few months ago till death and now they were fighting side buy side. This was something really hard to grasp for Atvar. More words appeared.

'From the wild seas of the North Pacific...'

And the scene changed again, showing an unknown city from the ground, the camera looking up and showing a large group of killercrafts, Tosevite ones, with swept wings and the sound of jet engines in the air, while air-raid-sirens where howling.

'...to the occupied cities in Latin-America and Eastern Europe...'

And again it the scene of the movie changed.

'...from the ice-cold waters of the North-Atlantic...'

A group of large ships appeared. One was flying the flag of the Empire of Britain, while the other one showed the flag of the not-empire of France. These ships looked nearly identical to the ships he had seen before, if it were not for the missile launchers that were now built onto their decks.

'...to the dangerous depths of the Mediterranean sea...'

The scene showed one of these submersible ships the Tosevites had developed, a concept totally unheard of on Home. Any of the Race's weapons had been proven to be useless against them, so they had to use Tosevite weapons they called depth charge. The scene was lit up, when suddenly one of these depth charge, which sank into the scene, exploded and the submarine tilted slightly but was unharmed otherwise. The flash showed a Black-Red-Golden Flag with a bird of prey on in on the turret of the ship. Fleetlord Atvar hissed in anger at the scene. Those Tosevites were mocking them.

'...from the devastated cities of our homelands...'

A Race landcruiser was driving through a street filled with tubble, a Tosevite, hidden in a destroyed building, holding one of this infantry-fired shaped charges, aiming at the landcruiser.

'...to the skies over the Race-occupied land...'

A group of killercrafts was shown, larger than anything anyone of the Race has ever seen or built, again with swept wings and jet-powered, Atvar thought he counted at least eight jet-engines, dropping bomb after bomb after bomb.

The next scenes were shorter, a Race killercraft flying low over some destroyed buildings, followed by a Tosevite one, trying to shoot it down, a Tosevite landcruiser rolling over a Race assault rifle, smashing it into scraps...

'From the battle-proven cities of Spain...'

A large group of killercrafts were shown slowly disappearing in the clouds while enormous numbers of parachutists were shown above a large cathedral.

'...to the shores of Brazil...'

Several weird shaped boats were approaching a coast while two Race killercrafts flew over them, firing their canons on them, and some were surely hit but the ships simply went on.

'...from the ice-covered plains of Siberia...'

A group of primitive Tosevite trucks were shown, firing off their missiles on their load area on an unknown target.

'...to the aliens' landing zones all over the world...'

Two killercrafts were shown, but it seemed that they were not powered by jets but rather by rockets since they were drawing an enormous trail of smoke behind them. Then the machines tilted over, to the side and out of view, the scene changed again, showing them coming directly to the viewer, then from behind, flying over a major Race base, several spaceships shown inside the base. The two killercrafts made several evasive movements to evade some missiles.

Then suddenly, when Atvar already thought that they would crash into the spaceship, they both dropped two large rockets which ignited their motors instantaneously, flying fast towards the spaceship. His heartbeat sped up as he watched the scene. One of the missiles was shot down by a missile. But the other one...hit...with deadly precision and the entire spaceship exploded, the fireball engulfing the entire screen.

Large golden letters appeared:

'THE UNITED NATIONS FIGHT FOR FREEDOM! WE SHALL NEVER SURENDER!'

Their symbol appeared too, the Tosevite globe, engulfed by two branches and two swords crossed over these branches.

Then the screen went dead as the transmission stopped. But Atvars heartbeat was still running fast as if he had been running for several kilometers.

'Those Tosevites...may all their eggs be addled, may all their...'

He threw several more curses on those creatures in his thoughts. He began to hate them, truly hate them. He felt an instinct to tear them apart with his own claws and fangs. If he just could use their explosive-metal-bombs. But until now they had not found any mistake in them, so he was not sure that they would loose more to the Tosevites.

Then he let out an frustrated roar at the dead screen and pushed himself off, out of the command-station, leaving behind several frightened officers and soldiers.

* * *

_(( P.S. For the Copyright: The Propaganda-Movie which was seen by the Race in the last part was inspired by the main trailer of the video-game : 'Battlefield 1942'. ))_


	5. Mister Sam Yeager I presume?

Approximately 200 kilometers west of Moscow, Earth (Tosev 3)

With a clattering sound the commander of the first special tank division opened the hatch of his tank and looked around as the tank slowly rolled forward. He looked through a camera that was like a miracle to him. As he looked through it, the special spotlight following the camera, which was mounted to the tank's top, he could see the burning debris of the Race tanks his group has destroyed as bright green dots. His group consisted of large numbers of IJ-3s and T-10s as their support while T55s and their IWG-100s (Iwan Wassiljewitsch Groznyj - 100) were the main battle tanks.

The later ones were really rare yet and he was lucky to be commander of this group were the bulk of them were stationed. The armor of these tanks was so strong that, together with the new exploding armor-plates even a Race tank needed more than two shots to destroy one. And they were large, really large. A true monster, with a body that is shaped like a lentil-seed and on four tracks. Even the gun was bigger than anything he had ever imagined, 130 millimeter. He had heard that even the guns of the alien lizards were not that large. And it was fully stabilized, so they could fire even while driving at full speed.

He looked around for possible resistance or Race-units that have been left behind, but could not see any enemy tanks. Then he looked back at his battered battle-group. Many of them had large craters in their armor-plates and would need extensive repairs. But that could only be done if they destroyed these onrushing Race tanks, that were trying to get to Moscow.

He lifted his arm, his hand a fist, as a signal for all tanks to stop and spoke into his microphone.

"Stop, comrades. Ten minute-break. Anyone who needs to piss now shall do it, or you will fight the lizards in your own waste. Two men of each tank-replace your missing exploding-armor-plates right now." he ordered. Most of them were battle-hardened veterans and nearly all of them were following his orders, microseconds after they left his mouth. He was proud to be the commander of this group.

He lifted himself out of the hatch and jumped of the vehicle, landing in the muddy snow. The winter this year was colder than during the last years, which was their luck. It seemed that the invaders from another planet were not really expecting the weather to get so cold. He had seen tanks that were left behind but not because of a fight, but because of the cold. Unfortunately they were always not in a useable state, as the Race destroyed them by blowing up their own ammunition.

"Comrade-commander Wasili!" another tank-commander rushed to his side.

"Comrade-commander Wasili, I was asking...if we could rest for at least two hours...the crews are way too spent to go on any longer. We destroyed more than 100 enemy tanks in the last four days, and our battalion lost more then 30 of our own tanks and more then 50 of our men, and 50 more were badly injured. I know that we have to fight the lizards and have to push them back as hard as possible. But...we cannot go on like this."

The commander sighed and took a deep breath of the ice-cold air, the fresh oxygen flowing through his body. After he thought for it for a few more seconds he turned to his comrade.

"I...guess you are right, my comrade. Let us rest for a bit longer and get some rest."

He just wanted to give another order when all of a sudden, the night which has been dark as the deepest seas, was filled with nothing but light. Since it was behind him he was not blinded by it, but several other brave soldiers were and he could feel the heat from the light through his thick winter coat. After about another second the bright light had died down and he turned around, only to see a fire-red mushroom cloud, hundreds of meters high and nearer than he wished it was.

He knew instantly what to do and yelled the orders in telegram style.

"EVERYONE! INSIDE TANKS! STEER TANKS INTO THE SHOCKWAVE! PRESSURIZE! SMALL TANKS BEHIND IWANS!"

He knew he had only seconds before the shockwave would hit them. He saw his injured comrades, some blinded and some with horrible burnings where the skin was exposed to the explosion, were dragged into their tanks as he rushed to his own. He climbed on it, and let himself fall into it, falling hard onto his seat, while the crew was steering the tank around and into the shockwave and sealed the tank-air-tight.

Wasili could hear the other tanks trying desperately to drive behind the Iwan tanks to have at least some protection from the powerful detonation. The Iwans were specially constructed just for this - to survive a close nuclear explosion. And Wasili wished that the engineers did not make any mistakes.

Then the shockwave came and the tank shook like a thousand hammers were pounding against it, all the exploding-armor-plates exploding at the same time.

In orbit around Tosev 3 (Earth) onboard the bannership 127th Emperor Hetto

"We have three positive ones, my Fleetlord. Three of our explosive-metal-bombs did explode." Kirrel said joyfully over the intercom to his commander who had been trying to get some rest. When Kirrel did not get any answer he first thought that he might be either deeply asleep from all the exhaustion lately or the intercom was malfunctioning.

But neither was true as Fleetlord Atvar flew like a bullet through the door and to the computer console with Kirrel.

"Give me all the information you got, Kirrel. Where did it work?"

"My Fleetlord we have been trying to bomb several large landcruiser groups inside the SSSR, Deutschland and the USA with small-yield tactical nukes, so we could try to conquer Moscow and relieve our forces in the other two not-empires, just as you ordered. We know that three detonated, each in one not-empire, the other twelve ones...did not. But at least this time it was partially successful.

As according to our plan, the killercrafts dropped the bombs a few kilometers off the battle-groups, so in a case they should not explode, as they did in Australia, a group of helicopters could get them before the Tosevites could. And in the case of the other targets we had to act like this. Only the ones here,..." he pointed at the three-dimensional hologram ".. here and here, near the largest groups of Tosevite landcruisers the bombs did detonate. I already ordered our engineers to look into the checklist what was done differently when the bombs were examined."

Unfortunately to the Race commander the examination would bring them no new details, simply because of the reason that the young engineer who was responsible for these bombs did not write a simple fact write into his report - that he had replaced the solid-state-memorys of these bombs because he accidentally damaged them during the reassembly, by letting them fall on the floor all at once, and he was too afraid of telling his superior that he had damaged so valuable parts. But with this simple action he had made the bombs operational again, since the spare-part did not contain the computer virus of the interdimensional visitor. And, if by a weird humor of the universe itself or just ill fate, these bombs were delivered to the three killercraft groups that would each attack Deutschland, the SSSR and the USA.

"So...how many of of their landcruisers there are left? I want a report as quick as possible."

* * *

Approximately 200 kilometers west of Moscow, Earth (Tosev 3)

Wasili groaned when he got up again.

'I am thinking therefore...I am alive.' he thought to himself. The engineers truly have created a masterpiece of a war-machine with this tank. He looked to the side and saw on a scale, that the radiation levels have increased dramatically, both on the inside and the outside. Even though they were shielded by by centimeters of lead and other metals, the radiation reached them.

He looked through the little telescope around, trying to check how many of his tanks have survived. It was just horrible. All the trees around them were now naked, all needles were blown away and tree-stumps which were nearer to the explosion were burning, and the entire snow was molten. I looked like hell.

"Bozhe moy!"

Then he turned the periscope around...and was just shocked. Tanks were tipped over or lying on the side, like toys a child has just thrown away. Some were missing their turrets, they were simply blown off by the explosion. And the bodies...he saw smashed and torn apart soldiers. None of them moved. The instant the explosion must have reached them, their tanks and with them their crews were torn apart.

He hoarsely mumbled into his microphone.

"All...surviving tanks, report to me now."

As he was going through a list and listened to the voices over the radio, he had to face the fact...that they had just lost more than half of all tanks in this unit.

"To all surviving tanks, get out here, we need to get out of the radiation zone. We need to regroup."

At least all of the Iwans were still intact. They were now driving back, the way they were just coming from, trying to find out if other units were attacked with nuclear weapons too.

Then all of a sudden he heard another voice over his radio.

"Surviving comrades. Stop your retreat and prepare for counter-attack on the Race-lines. We will bomb them in five minutes and this special attack will make them see that they will never get our glorious land."

A special attack? He looked around with his periscope and saw several small bombers, circling far off at the horizon. How do they want to attack when they were circling over the totally wrong point?

Then...for the second time this day, a flash brighter than the sun lit up the night. But this time...it was over the frontline of the Race.

* * *

About 120 kilometers off the fighting scene

A Soviet officer was watching through his binoculars, special made with darkened glasses. He was watching the bright column of smoke erupting from the ground on the horizon. A large canon was standing beside him, the barrel still smoking from the atomic grenade that just a few minutes before has been fired through it.

"Well done, comrades. It seems we truly have wiped out their largest tank-division. Our fatherland should be safe now."

He looked over at the gun. Just now he sees the irony behind it, that this replica of the Paris-gun, that was used by the Germans during Worldwar One, their former enemy in this war, has saved their nation.

Then, as if suddenly a bee-swarm has been unleashed several large bombers and gunships were flying over their heads, heading towards the bombing scene, to eradicate any remaining resistance. He could see the guns, sticking out of the side of the gunships, giving them the look of flying battleships. They would fly circle after circle over their enemies and fire at everything in their sight until nothing would be left.

Several hours later, a Race-base in central Poland, Tosev 3

The groaning and the screams of extreme pain from the injured soldiers was heart breaking and the doctors and their assistents could barely keep up with treating them. There were just so many of them. All of them were coming from the battlegrounds in Poland and central Italy were the Tosevites had unleashed the power of the atom against them.

The Race doctor, who had been treating horrible burns and severe cases of radiation poisoning, finally collapsed on his chair, taking some minutes of rest. But the horrible pictures in his head remained. He could have never imagined that such a primitive species could do such horrible things to them. And then these...other horrible attacks. He had to talk with the Fleetlord right now that he could spare a few minutes.

It took several more minutes before he was granted a direct communication-channel to his Fleetlord.

"My Fleetlord." He lowered his eye-turrets as Atvar appeared on the screen before him.

"Greetings. I suppose that you have bad news for me, according to your looks and the fact that the base you are working on treats most of our injured soldiers from the Tosevite attack with explosive-metal-bombs."

"That is correct my Fleetlord. We are trying our best to treat as many as possible. But there is...another issue. I first did not notice it, because I thought them to be burns just like other soldiers had them that had been attacked with explosive-metal-bombs.

But then I heard that they were from other landcruiser groups that were not attacked by explosive-metal-bombs. I asked some of them who were still able to talk what has happened. And they said that they got under extremely heavy artillery fire. But...a large number of these grenades did not explode.

When they hit the area around the landcruisers, the soldiers all said the same, that some of these grenades were leaking some sort of brown gas and as soon as it touched our soldiers...the gas caused injuries that are similar to heat burns or skin corrosion. It also caused severe injuries of their lungs and every other mucous membranes.

And this is not the only weird incident. I...examined several corpses of our soldiers because they did not seem to have died from either radiation, gunshots or burns like I mentioned before and my Fleetlord...I do not have a full explanation yet.

These males simply suffocated. As if their snouts had been hold together until there was no more oxygen in their lungs. We found at least two different kinds of weird agents in their bloodstream. They were quite different but both were causing them same... they seem to paralyze the respiratory organs, so they would die of the lack of oxygen."

The first few second the Fleetlord did not move at all. He was just staring straight at the doctor through his screen.

"So...you want to tell me, that the Tosevites are in possession of a gas, that can be used as a weapon?"

"Yes my Fleetlord. There is no doubt about it. There were incidents both at the frontlines in Deutschland controlled Italy and the SSSR. I have not heard from similar incidents in other parts of the world but I would not be surprised if we will experience similar incidents in other not-empires."

The Fleetlord looked to the side for a few seconds , then he said : "So...the Tosevites have some sort of...Poison-gas. Would you be able to develop an antidote?"

"For the ones that caused the burns, I doubt that there is one, for the other ones...if I had more time I could do it, surely. But it would take years, if not decades to develop a working one."

"By the Emperor, it's always time we need" the Fleetlord mumbled. "Do you... do you have any other suggestions how we can protect our soldiers against this threat?"

"Only one: Avoid contact with these gases at all costs. The only possibility would be an air-tight suit or vehicle, maybe like the ones we have to use if workers are handling hazardous goods or have to deal with radiating material. But then then soldiers would need additional oxygen, which they would need to carry around, since we do not know how to filter these poisons out of the air. This is why I would suggest that all our soldiers should stay inside their landcruisers and have them sealed up at all times when they are at or near the frontlines. This is the only way we have now to protect them."

"Thank you for telling me this. We will tell all our soldiers about this threat immediately. You may have saved the lives of a lot of males. And if the time allows it, start to work on an antidote against these gasses."

"Yes my Fleetlord, I will start immediately, when have treated the injured soldiers."

"Let us just hope that there will not be more of them coming to your base soon."

Then the screen went silent.

* * *

Three days after the nuclear attacks, exact time unknown, location somewhere in the unoccupied USA

The visitor held the glass in his hand, staring on the wall on the other side of the room.

'For God's sake...those stupid primitives ethnocentrists.' he thought.

He just had a verbal battle with the military and political leaders of all major powers because of two reasons: First because of the fact that the Race had been able to use nuclear weapons, although the visitor has promised they would not be able to do so and second because of the unrestrained use of weapons of mass destruction against the Race, like Germany did in Italy with a K5 railway gun, the USSR with a modified Paris-gun from Worldwar One and the Americans with a YB-49 flying wing stealth bomber, which was shot down unfortunately after the bombing.

Not only had they now three nukes less they could use for their global EMP attack on the Race, several ten, if not hundred thousand people (for the humans of this time it was still extremely hard to see the member of the Race as people) were dead too and many more injured because of the use of mustard-gas, Tabun, Soman, Sarin and other poisonous gasses.

For the military and political leaders of their time it was totally incomprehensible how he could have any sympathy for the Race. They were no humans after all, so why bothering?

A knock on the wooden door interrupted his thoughts.

"If any of you want more advices from me, just forget about it. Unless you have decided to ban the use of WMDs." he yelled through the door.

A man who seems to be in his early 30s, cautiously looked through the half-open door.

"Sorry, Sir...I...did not want to disturb you."

The visitor just looked briefly at the young man, then his attention was on his glass again.

"Sorry...I was just thinking that another one of these excuses for a leader wanted me to give them data about more effective ways to kill more Race members." He sighed. "I hope you are not here because they told you to do so."

"No Sir. I may be a member of the US military, but I am here because I wanted to meet you and just talk with you. My name is Sam Yeager."

"Ah, I have heard from you. You are the one that has been trying, heck, I meant not trying, you were successful at understanding the mindset of the Race and their language. It is true that you even befriended with two of them.?"

"Yes, it is true. Ullhass and Ristin. It took me some time at first but I managed to built up a friendly relationship with them. I even have been able to meet with Shiplord Straha. You know the one that defected and surrendered to us two days ago. We are not that different, Humankind and Race I mean."

"You do not have to tell me that, Mister Yeager. In my time and universe, people are a lot more open-minded than here. We did not see them as inferior beings, at least the majority of the Earth's population did not, when they entered our solar system, even though they came here to start a war."

He stood up and walked to a little closet, getting two small glasses.

"Can I offer you a drink? I have only a small variety of drinks right now. Gin, Bourbon Whiskey...?"

"A small glass of Bourbon would be fine, thanks Sir."

Yeager was really fascinated when the visitor held the glass under the device on his arm and a clear, amber-colored liquid poured out of a nowhere under the machine.

"My god..." he said as he took the glass "...in none of the science-fiction books I had read I have read anything like this." He tasted the liquor. It was strong and better than anything he had ever tasted. The visitor took a little sip too.

"Aach, Wild Turkey Bourbon 2121. A really rare one. I have been able to get some bottles from this rare year and stored it in my little helper here. Sometimes it helps to just enjoy a little bit of this stuff when you are just done with the world around you."

Yeager looked down at the glass when the visitor said from what year it was. "Now...this is somehow weird. Wild Turkey Bourbon is a brand that is just a few years old here, but now I am drinking one that is older and at the same time younger than I am myself."

The visitor chuckled at the irony of this and both took another sip.

"Now, Mister Yeager, how can I help you, beside offering you some liquor from the future?"

The man just shrugged. "Well, nothing special Sir. As I already told you, I was always quite interested in science-fiction stories, you know Robert A. Heinlein and such stories. But you are more like this man from 'The Time Machine' by H.G. Wells."

"Well it is a bit different. But I can see where you come from. So...any questions about the future? How we live, our technology and weapons or similar?"

"I am more interested in the society of your time, Sir. How people do view each other, and especially how people in your time see the Race?"

The man tilted his head, as if thinking of he should answer this question.

"You seem like an honorable man and most importantly, you seem not to be tainted be prejudices."

He made small circles with the glass in his hand, stirring the liquor.

"To make it simple, people in my time are really, really open-minded. Open to new views and new ideas, which is necessary I guess since the variety of cultures and likings are varying so much. Prejudices still exist but they are minor. We do not see anymore, for example, people with black skin as people of an inferior human race, which people here still do. In my time this habit to stigmatize blacks, you know with special park-banks, seats in the buses, schools and so on, is seen as nearly as bad as the stigmatizing of Jews in Nazi-Germany.

So when the Race arrived in our Solar-system and had to surrender to the space military of the Sol-Confederation, people did not see their views as wrong or corrupted or similar. They just said 'Hey nice, you have your own point of view, but please do not try to enforce it on us.' "

"How did you manage that they would surrender to you?" the young man asked.

"Well, sometimes a little bit of gun-boat policy is still needed. We just threatened to blow up all their starships in the orbit of Mars and do the same to their colonial fleet, if the do not comply. I am happy that they decided to surrender and a lot of people on Earth were too. We did not want to wipe them out, even we had the chance to do so."

"So...no evil empires in your time that want to take over the world?"

"Only evil corporations, that try every now and then to take over another market, sometimes an entire nation, but no. This ancient rule 'Who has the power, has the right' does not apply to my universe anymore. We could have imprisoned or killed everyone of the them. But it would have been simply wrong. I know that the fighting nations here have captured a lot of Race-members too and hold them as POW. But they do not because of the fact that they see them as equals, who deserve rights and dignity, more because they hope to get some advantages in military aspects, and because of the fear that the Race would throw an nuclear bomb or an asteroid on their heads. Luckily they never imagined the concept of orbital bombardment. That would have been pretty difficult to prevent."

Yeager again looked into the good tasting liquor, thinking about the things the visitor just told him.

"To me this sounds like paradise."

"I guess where you come from, it must sound like this. But to be totally honest, it came at a price, a large price. A small nuclear war at the end of the twenty-first century, a large number of smaller conventional ones, rebellions, revolutions, civil wars in the US and China, climate change with a sea level two and a half meters higher than before, which flooded great parts of the world and some major cities, like London, Tokio, New York, San Francisco... . Well you get the picture. It was not all flowers and rainbows."

"I truly hope we can end this war soon...all this killing and all this fighting..." He stopped talking for a moment.

"Yeah. You have to know...I have been hacking secretly into the more private networks of the Race...and they are truly desperate right now, and what is even more of a problem is ginger. More and more seem to get addicted to it."

As Yeager heard this he just looked up. "I know...I have seen soldiers of them that would have done anything to get just a little piece of it. And they cannot be helped, if they taste it once they are addicted for life it seems. And there are even thoughts in the military of using it as a weapon."

"Yes, we experienced this too. When we gave them some of our food, including ginger-beer and ginger-bread, several thousand of them got addicted to it. They were of course outraged, blaming us that we first defeated them totally and now even want to make them their drug-addicted slaves. It was quite some hard work of our diplomats to convince them that it was an accident and not intentionally. We stopped of course giving them anything that even just remotely contains ginger, but that does not help the fact, that several thousands of them are now permanently addicted. I hope our doctors together with the Race-medics will find a way to cure them somehow."

More silence.

"What do you intent to do with the Race-people in your universe. I mean, you said that they had to surrender unconditionally. So they do not have any land they could settle one."

"Well, it is a bit difficult. We had some really tough talks with the South Pacific Confederacy, which consists of Australia, New Zealand and a lot of island that did not sink in the rising seas, and also several African nations that they would give land temporarily to the Race where they could live, until we have sorted out our problem with our FTL devices."

"FT...L?"

"Faster than light. You have to know, just about one year before the Race arrived we had been able to built the first ship that was able to travel faster than light. There is just one problem with it, it cannot transport ships that have more mass than about 10 000 tons. We tried and the engine just blew up.

But when this is settled out hopefully, we intend to built these devices into the ships of the conquest and colonial fleet, send them back to Home, built the devises out again and tell the Race that if they ever try again to occupy more planets we will come back and occupy them."

"Wow, this is pretty...harsh."

"I know, but it is just a plan yet. Maybe we will even offer them another planet without sentient life, who knows?" He shrugged. "Even we cannot tell the future mister Yeager."

He lifted his glass to a toast.

"To all sentient life out there - may we find ways to live together without fights."

* * *

Warsaw, exact time unknown, exact location unknown

The leaders of the various militias and resistance groups of Poland have gathered in a small, barely lit up room, still wearing their thick winter coats, the moon shining through a barricaded opening in the wall were once a window was.

"And I say that we cannot waste anymore time. With the recent nuclear attacks the Race has shown that they will try to conquer the entire planet by all means. And the most recent closures of churches, mosques and synagogues has just shown that this visitor was right. If we do not join the fight with the UNPE now, in a few centuries there would little to nothing be left of our human cultures."one of them said, whispering, afraid that somebody might hear them.

The quarrel between them had been going on for hours, but slowly most of them were coming to a conclusion, and less and less saw a chance with fighting with the Race.

"Mordechaj Anielewicz, what is your view on this matter? You have not said anything yet. Your militias seem to be the ones that are the most friendly ones towards the Race. If we would fight against them, would this mean that we would have to fight against you and your men too?"

The Jewish leader watched the flickering oil-lamp for a second then he looked at the scary looking faces of the men on the other side of the table, illuminated by the small flame.

"My men are just as shocked as you be the most recent nuclear exchange, my friends. They saw them first as liberators but now are coming more and more to the conclusion that it was a wrong choice. But they are concerned about what would happen after the war ends. Would we still be seen as Poles of second class? The antisemitism and many prejudices that have been smoldering within Poland are their greatest worries. They would only fight if the government of a new Poland could protect them...as citizens of Poland."

"If your men will fight with us and fight for Poland, my friend, I doubt that many people will only see them as Jews but as Poles then as well."

"Then let us take a vote now." Mordechaj Anielewicz said. "Everyone who is for it, that we should start a fight against the Race as soon as possible, should raise his hand now.

There were no votes against the plan.


	6. NUTS

**Mecca, Arabian peninsula, Tosev 3 (Earth)**

Fadi bin Tamer walked slowly through the narrow alleys of the holy city, carefully watching that nobody was following him. He was carrying a very important cargo in his dirty backpack. Just a few hours ago he had been in an abandoned building outside the city where he had hidden some of the weapons that he and his friends would use to liberate that city.

He and his friends had split up when they had entered the city again, to make sure those scaly little devils would not suspect them to plot anything against them. But he also wondered how they could be so naive. Within the last few months he and several others had smuggled thousands of rapid-firing-riffles into the city as well as these portable rocket-launchers. They even managed to disguise several trucks that were carrying large rockets on a steel frame with stacks of boxes filled with food. The lizards never truly checked the cargo they were carrying, only a quick look into it, and then they just saw the boxes with dates, dried meat and similar stuff, without suspecting that behind them were deadly rockets.

Fadi turned around again, tightening his frock. Even under his clothing he was carrying weapons, four pistols and several hand-grenades on a belt, just like hundreds of others holy warriors.

He looked back again, then around the corner and looked into the dusty alley, but could not see any lizards. Suddenly he heard the typical sound of the helicopters that were patrolling over the city. Ever since the lizards did close all mosques within the city and prohibited any open expression of Islam there had been several revolts, but each time they had been brought down with deadly violence.

But now they had the weapons to start a real rebellion, now it was time to finally strike back and liberate that most sacred place on this planet.

When he was sure nobody was looking he knocked at the door to a large warehouse and said: " The caravan moves on." The door opened quickly and with a swift step he was inside, the small door locked behind him.

"Fadi. God is great. You made it too." his best friend Halil said.

He removed his hood. "Salam aleikum, my friend. Did the others made it to their hidings too?"

"Yes, every single one. We are all ready to fight and to die."

Fadi quickly put down his backpack and removed his frock. For the battle it would be of no use for him. He opened his backpack and took out several clips for this riffle this...visitor called AK-47.

When he thought back when he first met him, he had to shiver. Like a ghost he had appeared out of thin air. Several people that were with him in the room where he appeared thought he was the prophet himself to help them to fight against the lizards and some even do now. But Fadi was an engineer and after the visitor had explained who he was and where he came from some did not see him as the prophet anymore. He understood that this feats were simply carried out by a very advanced technology and not by magic.

All the other men in the room were already putting together their weapons. Pretty much all of the weapons that were around them in the warehouse were brought by this visitor. They had four different types of weapons: Guns and riffles, grenades, rocket-launchers and some few fighting vehicles. They had several hundred rounds of the RPG 2, but only a few dozens of the RPG-7. Fadi would carry three of them.

Their plan was simple. The helicopters above the city were patrolling in an regular pattern and stopping every few hundred meters at a certain point, rotate a bit and go on. One such point was right above this building here, a perfect spot to shoot them down.

After the skies were clear Fadi would join the fighters on the streets to fight the lizards there. There were only a few thousands of them within the city right now, so they should be no match, even with their tanks. They just had to react fast. Then he thought about the words of the visitor. He had asked him to spare the lives of the lizards that would surrender to them. He had explained that many of them were young men who just finished their education and that they were fighting under a wrong assumption, that they had to civilize humanity to bring them peace.

Fadi shook his head. He did not know what to do. Should he follow this man's request? The lizards had killed so many people. He had heard they even destroyed the capitals of the USA and Germany with some kind of super-bomb. So they surely deserved to be killed. But maybe...he would need the help of this man in the future one day. So...maybe it would be better to be at good terms with him.

He shared his thoughts with his friends, many of them did not really agree with him. But in the end they agreed that they would spare the lives of all lizards that would lay down their weapon and surrender to them. Should the visitor later take care of them.

Fadi took his little watch out of his pocket. It was nearly midday. The time to attack.

Together all the men held a brief prayer that God may forgive them that they would be fighting in the streets of the holy city. Then all the other men put on their frocks, their rifles and pistols ready and hidden under the fabric. Only Fadi stayed behind.

He took his backpack with the dissembled RPG, the AK on his back and climbed over a ladder to the flat roof, hiding behind some wooden boxes. Slowly and very carefully he put the weapon together, the large grenade last. With a click he readied the rocket-launcher, the finger near the trigger. Only a few minutes were left before all hell would brake loose over the city.

Then he looked up, hearing the sound of a helicopter approaching. It seemed he was lucky to start the first shot of this rebellion in the city.

Fadi looked again at his watch. One minute left. The large machine was drawing nearer and nearer, the large gun pointing straight at his position. But the pilot had not seen him. His breath was now going faster, his heart beating like a drum in his ears. It was now or never. When he looked over the edge he could see that the helicopter had just started to rotate.

When he started to get up, everything seemed to become slower, every movement he did was slowed down, even his blinking and heart beat. The helicopter was now showing his side right to the young man, the rocket-launcher aimed right at it. With a prayer on his lips he pulled the trigger and fired.

"ALLAHU AKBAR!"

**Same place, same time, 800 feet above the city, Tosev 3 (Earth)**

Flight-leader Dreek listened to the melody of a tune from Home, the sound gently humming in the loudspeakers in the cockpit. Here he could finally take a little rest, even while on duty. The Tosevites here had no killercrafts or weapons that could put him in danger. It was just a regular patrol flight over the Arabian peninsula and since there was not really a threat to the area here he was on his own now, but that did not bother him. This here was way better than the battle in central Europe where he got nearly killed by a German guided missile.

And now he was here, at a safe place and the weather and climate was also way better than in that frosty area he had fought.

He looked outside the canopy, below him only sand, sand and sand just like on Home. Only after a few minutes of automated flight a larger city came into sight below him. He had heard that this was the center of one of the many not-Emperor-worships of the Tosevites. He shook his head at this thought. How could a believe not include the worship of ones Emperor? But he was sure that over time the Tosevites would get rid of that wrong believe and see the true one.

He lowered his speed and flew a bit lower, taking a look at the city. Right outside the gates of the city he could see two large military bases his people built to keep the locals in check.

And just like with nearly every larger city within the territory they controlled there were gunships hovering above the city, just to let the Tosevites know who is in control.

He moved one eye-turret over and focused on one helicopter. For a moment in stopped, readjusting its position when it suddenly the rear of it...exploded.

Dreek gasped at that sight. Metal splinters were flying around and smoke erupted in the air, the machine started to rotate uncontrollably until it crashed into a small building a few streets away.

What did happen? Was there a technical failure? But how could such a failure make a gunship explode? The suddenly, while he was still circling above the city he saw all the other gunships meet the same fate, one after the other. Some exploded totally, others lost their rotors or their tails.

The sky was clear again.

**The streets of Mecca, Tosev 3**

Fadi bin Tamer yelled for all it was worth as he saw the helicopter crash-land just a few blocks away, just like all the others did over the city. At the same time he could hear explosions starting to fill the city and gunfire just a few streets away.

With several quick handles he reloaded the RPG and secured it, getting onto the streets as fast as possible. Like a madman he stomped out of the building and towards the sound of gunfire several streets away, his breath now fast, his blood flooded with adrenalin.

When he turned around a corner he could see several men behind a barricade made out of a truck, wooden frames and other trash. He hurried over to them and looked through a hole in the barricade. He could see one of the tanks the lizards called troopcarriers. One of the man leaned to the side and fired an RPG-2 but it missed, exploding at the sight of the vehicle. Then it started firing its machine gun, but either the gunner did not see where they were or he was totally overwhelmed with the situation because he was sending bullets everywhere except for where they stood.

Fadi ordered to cover him while he readied his RPG-launcher and leaned over the barricade, aiming straight at the tank and fired. But even though he had some training with these weapons he was not a soldier and so it did not hit the spot he had aimed at. Instead of hitting the front of the troopcarrier he hit the gun-turret, destroying it totally, while another holy warrior sent another RPG-2 round on its way, destroying the track of the troopcarrier and thus immobilizing it. The man around him started to shout in joy as the tank stopped firing, black smoke erupting from the spot where Fadi had hit.

For several seconds nothing more happened. Then he could see a single lizard stuck out his hand of the hatch, holding a small white piece of fabric. Fadi nearly started laughing at that sight. He had heard that some of the lizards had adapted a bit to human behavior in case they were caught. But this sight was simply so hilarious, that little green hand sticking out of the immobilized tank, waving and pleading not to shoot anymore.

The young man told the other fighters to get the lizards out there and lock them away for now but most of them looked more like they would like to put a bullet between their eye-turrets. So he took the AK-47 from his back and released the safety catch of the rifle, stepping slowly over the barricade, getting them himself.

While he slowly walked to the tank, carefully aiming at, it he could hear gunshots and explosions from everywhere around him, black smoke columns showing him that the fighting had spread everywhere.

Suddenly he heard a howling noise, like hell itself had opened and started releasing demons upon them. He looked up and could see gray trails of smoke. Then he realized that the mobile rocket artillery had started firing and it were the rockets that made that howling noise. The visitor had told them where to put the trucks with the rockets and at what angle to fire them to cause the most damage to the near bases of the Race outside the city.

A rumbling noise interrupted his thoughts when one of the very few tanks the visitor has brought them rolled onto the little plaza from a narrow alley, the two large guns pointing upwards. Fadi looked at the spot where the guns where pointing at, seeing a lizard jet. Then the tank started firing at the machine and hot cartridges were expelled onto the cobblestone, while the holy warriors around him called out in joy.

**Same place, same time, 300 feet above the ground, Tosev 3 (Earth)**

Dreek could not believe it while he watched the city below him. He saw a group of landcruisers and troopcarriers surrounded by several hundreds of Tosevites fighters, barely able to hold them back. He prepared to aim his canons manually on the Tosevite fighter when suddenly missiles were launched from several spots from within the city.

Only a few seconds after the first rocket took off, there were dozens of them in the air and were flying towards the bases, drawing parabolic-shaped smoke-trails behind them.

"Local landcruiser bases, prepare for attack. Rockets incoming!" Dreek yelled into his microphone.

"Has your egg been addled, what are you...?" Then Dreek heard several alarms in the background and commands yelled.

Dreek did not wait for any commands, he locked all his eighteen missiles on the rockets and fired them. The more advanced Race missiles caught up quickly and destroyed the primitive Tosevite rockets.

But that still left...several dozen more flying to the base. He could just watch helplessly as they hit. Each one could not contain much explosives but there were so many of them. He saw the rows of landcruisers going up in flames and twisted metal, the parking lot and several other buildings of the base covered in black smoke.

Then he could see a group of Tosevite vehicles approaching the half-destroyed base. But he did not have much time to think about what to do next. Suddenly around him black clouds appeared and it took him several seconds to realize that he was being attacked. The air was filled with shrapnels and several hit his killercraft. Cracks appeared on his canopy as it was hit by the little metal pieces.

He hissed in anger and frustration as again the only thing he could do was run away, leaving his fellow comrades behind.

**HMS Indomitable, Atlantic, 25 miles off the Coast of West-Africa, Earth, (Tosev 3)**

James Edgar Johnson was sitting in his Hawker P.1127, checking the instruments of the machine. He had been in the simulator for several weeks (or was it months?) and now he would finally fly this marvelous machine for the very first time in a real fight.

The problem was that the runway of this aircraft carrier was too short for him to start, so he would have to start vertically, a task he had only done twice with a real aircraft and never on board of a carrier.

"Flight control, request permission for VTOL-launch."

After a few seconds he could hear a crackle in his radio and then he heard the flight-controller speaking.

"Permission granted Firefly 1. Good hunt."

Johnson's breath got a bit faster as he increased the thrust of his engines to take off. The machine at first just rattled and shook slightly from one side to the other until if finally left the ground. Slowly at first but then faster he took off vertically until he had cleared the tower and he started the transition for aerodynamic flight.

After some more time he got his machine under full control and started his mission, to attack an Race base on the coast. He looked out through the canopy and saw half a dozen aircraft carriers, but only the HMS Indomitable was capable of launching manned aircrafts. All others had been converted to launch flying bombs from a rail built onto their flight deck, mostly improved versions of a German invention they called V1.

The Race barely seem to understand tactics at all, so this tactic was a really simple one. They would fire groups of unguided bombs towards Race bases so they would deplete their stocks of guided missiles which would make an attack easier. Johnson and several other pilots would attack the base and leave quickly. After that the local resistance had it easier to fight against the lizards.

Granted, it did not always work, since some Race base-commanders seemed to have learned from earlier experiences. But it was better than attacking them directly.

He followed a group of flying bombs that were ahead of him, flying low and slow towards the African mainland. After several more minutes the coast came in sight and Johnson and his fellow pilots were flying even lower to avoid radar contact.

The flying bombs were not really good for precision bombing, but they did not need to be. The lizards always saw them as a thread and would attack them even if they were not flying directly at them.

Just like this time. The flying bombs did not even reach the coastline when Johnson could see several missiles approaching. He did not fly any closer but changed to hover mode again, and so did the other pilots, only about 30 feet above the sea.

They watched for several more minutes, before the missiles launches stopped. Now they were ready.

"All units, attack at once."

And attack they did.

The attack did not even take ten minutes and they left the base in smoke and fire. Their VTOL aircrafts were not able to carry much payload as other aircrafts, so they could only drop several 100 pound bombs and then attacked them with their canons.

Only Johnson spared a single heat-seeking missile for their flight back.

They were already a about 10 miles of the shoreline when suddenly their radar-warners started beeping.

"Evade, evade, evade."

Each aircraft changed course and dropped their chaff to distract the incoming missiles. Three aircrafts were damaged when the incoming missiles hit the countermeasure too early and detonated near them. But they were still able to fly and tried to make their way home to the Indomitable.

Johnson looked up and saw just a single fighter. If he was lucky he could take it down alone.

"Everyone, retreat and leave that bastard to me."

Johnson tried to make a turn to get behind the alien fighter, but he was good, avoiding him and always staying out of his flightpath. Then he had an idea. It was risky, but it could work. He made a turn into the wrong direction, so the Race aircraft would get behind him.

When he heard the radar-warning inside the cockpit he lifted the nose of the aircraft so much that normally it would create a stall, but at the same time he changed the angle of the movable nozzles of his aircraft. He lost a great deal of speed in just a few seconds and the alien jet simply overshot him. Within a few seconds Johnson got his aircraft into the right angle again and aimed his last missile at the jet and shot it away.

With a satisfying grin he watched the missile hit the aircraft though the pilot seemed to have been able to bail out in time, the parachute opening right before him.

Again he changed the angle of the nozzles, letting them point straight downwards so he was hovering right in front of the lizard, who was slowly gliding towards the ocean. Johnson was not really good at reading the few facial expressions of the Race but he could tell that the pilot was frightened to death, the jet only ten meters in front of him and sinking at the same rate as he did, so the aircraft was always pointing at him.

Johnson watched the lizard glide down for a few more seconds until he decided it was enough and wanted to return to the carrier. But suddenly he heard the radar-warner again. He looked up and saw another lizard jet.

"Heavens!" he cursed. He had made himself a sitting duck.

The incoming jet started firing its canons and Johnson already saw himself turned into scraps as suddenly a stream of bullets pierced through the jet, black smoke erupting from the holes and the jet simply dropped down to the sea.

"Got a little bit carried away with your fancy toy, Jonny-boy?" he heard a voice mocking him. He saw a Havilland Mosquito fly by, one of the aircrafts that were used as a support to the fleet when all VTOL-aircrafts were on their mission. Compared to his jet it was a slow aircraft. But it was mostly built from wood and therefore barely visible for radar, which was probably the reason the other Race jet did not see him coming, so the Mosquito just could fire into its flight-path.

Johnson just grunted but he knew the other pilot was right. He got so carried away with this new tech that he simply ignored the danger he could get into.

He looked down and saw the lizard still hanging on his parachute and noticed that he was far away from the mainland. It was unlikely that his fellow soldiers would find him. So he did something he never thought he would do.

He lowered the thrust of the engines until he was below the lizard. Then he opened the second canopy behind him. Because they had so little aircrafts of this type, Johnson had to fly with the armed training version with two seats, which now came in handy.

He maneuvered from the left to the right and back, tilting the wingtips, trying to stay right under the lizard who did not understand what the human pilot wanted to do.

With a dull 'Bump' noise the lizard dropped into the open cockpit, somewhat dumbfounded where he suddenly was. He screeched when the human pilot turned around for a split second and waved a long knife. But he only did cut off the parachute and then quickly returned to his controls, the machine was already tilting from the movements he did inside the cockpit. The he closed the canopy again.

"You understand me?" he grunted at the lizard behind him.

"Y...yes Superior-Sir." the male answered, frightened.

"Okay then listen to me, Lizzy. I have no freaking idea why I just did what I just did. Maybe I took pity on you because you are a pilot like me and I did not want you to die there out in the open sea. Or I wanted to get another POW we could interrogate. Or just lost my mind, I dunno. But let me tell you, if you try anything foolish, I will shoot you out of that cockpit and as you surely noticed you have no parachute, so it would be a much faster fall. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Superior-Sir. I...I follow your commands." the Race pilot said. Although the pilots of the Race were one of the more aggressive ones in the ranks of the fighting males, right now he just felt like a weak, little hatchling.

"Good. So now shut up and do not touch anything." Johnson grumbled.

Just then he noticed that the switching between vertical and aerodynamic flight did cost him a lot of fuel. So he hurried to get back to the carrier.

The lizard watched with great curiosity as the human changed the angle of the nozzles and put the machine on a course to the carrier.

After some minutes of flight, Johnson broke the silence.

"What is your name, pilot?"

"Rolvar, Superior-Sir." the lizard answered quickly, his eye-turrets fixed on the Tosevite in front of him..

"So...Rolvar, let me ask you, have you ever seen anything like this aircraft you are sitting in?"

"No, Superior-Sir. I could have never imagined to see a killercraft hover in midair. How did you Tosevites achive this feat?"

"Hah. Really? You have nothing like that on your home-planet? Of course you have not, otherwise you would have brought them with you, isn't it? To put it simple, this aircraft has two jet-nozzles on each side of the hull instead of one or two at the back or under the wings and they can change their angle. Nothing secret if you know it, but a bit tricky to build and maneuver. If you behave good I may show you the nozzles when we are on the carrier."

"Thank you Superior-Sir." The male was simply astonished. He could not believe it. He thought the Tosevites to be brutal savages who needed to be trained how to be a civilized person. And now one of them had just saved him from assured death of hypothermia in the sea, despite just a few minutes ago they had been shooting at each other.

"HMS Indomitable, here Firefly 1, request immediate VTOL landing, I am low on fuel."

"Firefly 1, permission granted. Welcome back, Johnson. Did you have a successful hunt?"

"Yeah, we did really kick their scaly asses. I even got a little trophy here on my backseat."

"Pardon me, Sir?"

"You will see when I landed. Firefly 1 over."

Johnson maneuvered over the carrier and angled the nozzles down a last time for today, slightly tipping the wings to get closer to the landing zone. Rolvar watched in awe as they hovered only a few meters above the landing deck.

But suddenly the engine made a stuttering noise before it totally died. The jet dropped onto the deck like a brick, the landing gear smashed into pieces beneath it.

Johnson's oxygen-mask-covered face hit the control-panel while Rolvar's snout met the back of Johnson's seat.

"Gods, that hurt...are you alright, Rolvar?" The human removed the oxygen-mask and looked back and saw that the lizard was bleeding from a wound on his snout, but seemed to be okay otherwise.

"Not deadly injured, Superior-Sir. Just a small wound."

"Okay, then let's get outta here." said Johnson and opened the canopy and climbed out of the wreck. Because he was out of fuel there was no fire, so he could get the lizard out of the rear of his cockpit without the need to hurry.

"For gods sake, do you know what you just did? You just wrecked a 100 000 Pound jet and...who the hell is that?" the flight-deck-commander asked, nearly freaking out. He just felt like kicking this so called fighter-ace in his butt when he saw the Race pilot climb out of the cockpit.

"That Sir is Race-pilot Rolvar. I said I would bring a little trophy from my hunt with me." He looked at the lizard, who was shaking both from the fresh sea-breeze and the shock from their crash-landing, and shrugged. "Sorry Rolvar. Looks like I cannot show you how my aircraft works. But I can show you least a warm room. You look like you need to warm up."

"Thanks, Superior-Sir, that would be really kind."

Johnson could just grin as he them walked over to the next entrance to the living quarters, Rolvar following him, leaving behind a somewhat dumbfounded flight-deck commander.

**In orbit around Tosev 3 (Earth) onboard the bannership 127th Emperor Hetto **

Atvar was sitting on a Zero-G table in the officers' mess, finally able to rest for more than just a few hours. He was sipping a hot drink from a small spherical mug to chase away the tiredness in his body. He was still tired, despite that he had been able to sleep through the entire night without being woken up by his officers or nightmares of new inventions by the Tosevites.

A humming noise on the door let him sigh and he wished from the bottom of his liver that is was not bad news again.

"Come in." he mumbled, his thoughts more occupied with the hot drink in his hands than with anything else right now.

Kirrel appeared and showed his Fleetlord the proper respect.

"How do you feel, my Fleetlord? Now that you have been able to sleep one night without the disruption of your sleep."

The lizard with the mug in his claws looked up, both eye-turrets fixed on his loyal officer.

"I will not lie, Kirrel. There were times where I have felt much better than I do now. But one night of constant sleep really makes a difference. Sometimes I think the Tosevites do that on purpose, to weaken our minds and bodies by constantly showing us new ways to fight against us and never let us recover from it." He shook his head and his tailthump lowered. Then he snarled the Race equivalent of a chuckle at the thought of the newest propaganda video of the Tosevites.

"My Fleetlord?" Kirrel asked, confused.

"It is nothing, Kirrel. I was just thinking about that last propaganda video the Tosevites broadcasted a few hours ago. As with the last one, it did not really help us about the technology of the Tosevites, since it showed us the new technology after they attacked us with. It is just...this last part, you know, simply ridiculous. I mean, Tosevites with rocket-powered-backpacks, how stupid is that? There you see how primitive those creatures are. Their governments show them something spectacular and they are all behind them, despite the impossibility of such technology."

"Yes indeed, I have seen it too. These Tosevites must be really simple-minded if their entertainment looks like this too." He added a cough to his statement to show how he really thought about it. That was not entertainment, that was stupefaction."

Atvar looked back at the mug, then on a screen beside him, showing him a worldmap, divided between territory controlled by the Race, and the Tosevites.

"At least that harsh winter weather seems to effect them now too, at least a bit. This should give our soldiers enough time to regroup. But...you did not come here to discuss my self-pity. What did you want to tell me?"

The other lizard was still standing inside the door, one hand at a handle, unsure if he should tell him the news.

"My Fleetlord, we have lost parts of the Arabian peninsula to local resistance groups. The worst thing is that the Tosevites have been able to reconquer the city of Mecca. After their victory there the rebellion spread everywhere among the followers of the not-Emperor-worship of Islam. We still control most of the southern Hemisphere but there are now so many local resistance groups controlling smaller settlements that it will take months if not years to put that rebellion down after we defeated the Tosevites in the north."

"You are still confident that we will be able to defeat them finally Kirrel?"

"Of course I do. We are the Race. We always prevail."

"I wish I had your confidence Kirell. You..."

"MASTER-ALERT! SHIP UNDER ATTACK! MASTER-ALERT! SHIP UNDER ATTACK!"

The voice of the computer startled them. Kirrel even lost his grip on the floor and drifted through the room before Atvar was able to give him a hand. Master alert? That was impossible. The Tosevites were not that far developed, even with the kickstarter-boost they have shown in the last few months.

Both rushed into the command center of the ship.

"What's going on? What happened, which ships are under attack? the Fleetlord demanded, now fully awake.

"My Fleetlord, we are aimed at by several skelkwanks. We presume they are used as a guidance system for missiles."

The eyes of both of the high officers were opened wide in shock. Skelkwanks? Impossible, simply not thinkable of...Tosevites should not be able to...

"Are you absolutely sure it is an skelkwank?"

"Yes, I am. The computer says that is similar to a long-range guidance system for skelkwank-guided missiles."

"Where are they coming from? Are there any missiles approaching yet?" Kirrel demanded, concerned that a missile might hit any minute.

"No missiles launch yet worldwide. And the sources of the skelkwank are...they seem to come from everywhere of the resisting not-empires. I try to get an picture of the sources of the skelkwanks."

The young male pressed several controls before they saw a picture, taken from an hull-camera of the Hetto.

"Is that the ftaskelkwank?" Atvar asked. It looked just ridiculous. It was a truck, a German one, according by the black iron cross on the top of the driver's cab. On the load area behind it was something that looked like a canon, though several cables were hanging down from it, and the end was closed by a glass lense, and it was attached to what seemed to be a generator on another truck. Simply a primitive machine.

Suddenly the picture simply vanished, showing a static pattern.

"Forgive me my Fleetlord. It seems that this guidance-skelkwank has damaged the camera outside. I..."

"This is not a guidance-skelkwank." Atvar hissed. For some reason he simply knew what the Tosevites were up to.

"They are not aiming at us, they are blinding us. They try to take away one of our last advantages, orbital monitoring. Quick, all other ships should close the visors over the camera lenses outside of the ships."

"But then we are blind and..."

"The Fleetlord has given you an order. Follow it now." Kirrel hissed enraged at the young soldier.

Atvar moved one eye-turret into Kirrel's direction.

"From now on we only use our cameras for orbital monitoring very briefly when we are over the northern hemisphere. We cannot risk to loose one of our last advantages."

"My Fleetlord" another lizard said. "We just discovered a huge fleet of those large killercrafts the Tosevites built, the ones with the eight jet engines. They evaded our radar by flying over the northern pole, flew over the Scandinavian peninsula and are straight heading to Poland. I tried to warn our troops there, but I was only able to make contact with our bases in the east of Poland, all other bases and local contacts in Poland are not responding at all."

Both Kirrel and Atvar did not know how to react to that. Normally there was an attack, a sneak assault or similar before a base would go silent. But now...?

** Warsaw, Poland, Tosev 3 (Earth) -**

Several soldiers moved out of the city hall, the disarmed members of the Race walking in front of them, eye-turrets looking around confusedly. They did not understand why the Polish and Jewish militias had suddenly turned against them.

"I demand an answer" the liaison officer of the Race in Warsaw snarled. "Why are you doing this? We helped you to get rid of the Deutschlanders and the soldiers from the SSSR and this is how you thank us. We thought that you were one of the more civilized Tosevite groups, since you were working with us so willingly. But now it turns out you are just as barbaric than all the others on this forsaken planet."

He stopped is enraged speech when suddenly two more humans approached him and he recognized them. One was a leader of the Polish militia here in Warsaw, but he always kept forgetting his name, the other one was Mordechaj Anielewicz, the leader of the Jewish militia. He snarled and bared his teeth, hissing at them.

"I demand answers from you two now. Why are we held captive, why are you disarming us, why in the Name of the Emperor are you doing this?" he coughed and snarled to show his anger and also frustration.

"I am sorry that this is happening, but...the situation has changed. We disarmed you because if we would not participate with the uprising all around the world, we would alienated from the rest of the world for all times. The rest of the world is already not kindly watching us, since we were collaborating with you. We simply had to act."

"I don't understand. How can you do this? I thought we were friends. We helped you to fight, we helped you to rebuild your cities, gave you food, shelter, medical treatment, even weapons,…."

"...and we are grateful for that, believe me." Mordechaj tried to appease the lizard. "Please understand. We are grateful that you helped us, but...I must tell you that more and more people in Poland are concerned about all your actions. The use of so many atom-bombs, your view on our way of life with our religions and languages. Try to understand that we, the Polish people were once in a similar situation. Our nation was divided between three empires and all three of them tried to do what you are doing now. They were trying hard to eradicate our Polish culture, our history, our...everything, and they wanted to replace it with their own. And...to speak frankly, our people don't want it to happen again. Even if we would not helped you now, rest assured that one day the Polish people would have risen up against your rule who tries to replace what we are with what you are. We decided to act now to avoid bloodshed."

The lizard hissed in anger at them. "You fools. Do you think that this...Warsaw Uprising will make any difference for us? We will reconquer this land. If you will stop this rebellion now and accept our actions, I will talk with the Fleetlord and tell him that it was a misunderstanding. No one of you will be trialed. If you decide to continue...I cannot assure you anything."

Now it was the time for the Polish militia leader to talk.

"You think that we took just control of Warsaw? Since you never expected to be attacked from within we were able to take control of all your bases west of the Vistula. And I can tell you they were taken off by surprise, all of them. We were able to capture all of them without any bloodshed...yet. And let me tell you this. We the people of Poland and your people...are not friends, despite that you were helping us. When you helped us, we decided to work with you because it seemed to be the lesser evil of all options we had. But as we said the situation has changed. We made a deal with the Americans. We joined the side of the UNPE, and they will send us soldiers and equipment to help us fend of any possible Soviet or German attack. "

The lizard wanted to respond to this but without warning the air-raid-sirens of the city started howling. Eyes and eye-turrets were looking up, searching the skies. The sirens have not been howling for months now. Who was coming now?

Then various people started pointing into a certain direction, having spotted the airplanes. Mordechaj Anielewicz looked through his binoculars and gasped. Those aircrafts were large, no. They were gigantic, flying fortresses. Eight jet engines, packed in four twin-packs under the wings. He had heard from various talks with some lizards that they were American, and they used them now frequently against lizard bases and tank groups for carpet-bombing. One half of such an aircraft group dropped the bombs while the other half was not equipped with bombs, according to the Race, but with dozens of radar-guided machine-canons at their side against any missile attack. The lizards really hated them. They called them after a beast from an old legend of theirs but he forgot the name.

"There. There you see it." the Race officer shouted. "They are betraying you again. Set us free and let us defeat them. Only then you will have a chance of survival."

The lizard has not even stopped talking when suddenly white mushrooms started appearing in the skies above Warsaw and the people realized it were parachutes. It must have been thousands of soldiers. Mordechaj could even see a few light tanks that were dropped from the aircrafts.

People were just staring into the sky, unsure what to do. Most of the parachuters were dropped outside the city but a few seemed to have jumped out of the aircraft right above the city.

After a few minutes nearly all parachutes had reached the ground, but one seemed to steer into their direction, right where Mordechaj Anielewicz and all the others were standing. With a dry noise of soldier boots hitting the ground, the soldier landed on the place in front of the city hall.

He got tangled in the strings of the parachute and it took him some seconds before he simply cut them off. Then he looked around, seeing the captured lizards and the two militia leaders and went over to them.

"Brigadier General McAuliffe from the 101st Airborne Division, ready to kick-ass, Sirs." He saluted. "Are you the local resistance leaders?"

"Yes, Brigadier General, that we are." Mordechaj responded and offered the American his hand. "Good to see you here. Although I hope we will not need you. Both the Germans and the Soviets have, until now, stuck to their word and avoided all cities in Poland while fighting the Race. I hope they will be out of our country soon after this war has ended."

McAuliffe shook the hand of the militia leader and took a cigar out of his chest pocket and lit it up.

"Don't worry. If they try anything stupid we will kick their asses. They must be nuts to try to fight us." He puffed a smoke ring. "Also...nice idea to use Chopin's Nocturne Op.9 No.2 to show us you were ready to join the fight."

Then he looked at the lizards.

"Okay, then I'll gather up my soldiers and we will take care of your POWs."

But Mordechaj refused. "I am sorry General. All Race-POWs fall under the jurisdiction of the Polish transitional government. You are just supposed to fight here in case of German or Soviet aggression."

The General took in a deep breath through his cigar, eyeing the militia leader. After he exhaled another smoke cloud he said: "Fine, whatever you say. But my president also wants me to get at least some examples of undamaged Race technology and I guess since you Poles were controlling now most of the country you could maybe...you know, in exchange for our protection, give us some stuff."

"I am sure, Mister McAuliffe that we will come to an agreement."

The military leaders shook hands again and McAuliffe shouldered his M16, walking off to look for his soldiers.

The Race liaison officer had watched the scene and thought with horror about what could happen now. The Tosevites where already advancing so fast. And now...with their own technology in the hands of those primitives...where would this lead to?


	7. Battlefield 1943

**Ural Mountains, secret underground facility of the Red Army, Earth (Tosev 3)**

"You are nuts, totally nuts! You are so nuts that you do not even realize how nuts you are!" the visitor yelled at the Soviet engineers and scientists. He was absolutely furious about what he was just been revealed to.

"Trust us, we knew what we did when we built it." one of the engineers said.

"No, you do NOT!" he said enraged, pointing at the large bipedal machine that was stabilized by a large metal framework. "What you built there should not have existed until 2098. This thing may look like a Mecha but it will never be be able to work. You got NOT the computing systems that would be necessary to control it, you got NOT the right alloys to make it last for a longer time and last you got NOT an energy source that could provide the 10 Megawatt that would be needed to make this thing work. So what did you think when you constructed this thing?"

One of the scientists stepped forward, letting the visitor calm down for a bit before he tried to explain.

"We were aware of all the problems you just told us. But when we found this piece of weaponry in your database you gave us, we thought it would be the ultimate weapon to fight against the Race. Just as our equipment their ground forced consists only of machines that roll on tracks or wheels. A walking tank would send a storm of fear through their entire armed forces even if it is just one machine. Shock and awe, I think you will call that one day, isn't it?"

The scientist looked over at the machine, colored in camouflage green, but at the heart of the torso was a small red hammer and sickle, indicating it is the property of the USSR. It had two small arms with 120 mm guns from the modified versions of the T34s and several large machine canons right at the side of the guns.

The he looked at the visitor again. "We were totally aware that with our current technology we would not be able to replicate a...Mecha like we did with, for example a T-55, or other machines. That is why we asked this 'AI' of the assemblers if he would be able simplify the machine that much that we would be able to build one on our own."

For a few seconds the man from another dimension did say nothing, then he lifted his voice that it could be heard through the entire cavern."

"AI! MOVE YOUR NON-EXISTING ASS RIGHT HERE!"

A small silvery colored sphere floated quickly to the group and in front of the visitor.

"Yes, commander? What are your orders?"

In a very calm and low voice the visitor said: "AI, did you, by chance, gave the people of this timeline the blueprints of technology that is way beyond their understanding, despite my order to not give them any information beyond the date of 1970, and did you also, by chance, reverse-engineer modern machinery for them, like, I don't know, a Mecha from the Kongo campaign from 2099?" He pointed lazily at the Mecha at their side.

"Yes commander I did, and no, you did not gave me the order to not give the locals information beyond that specific date. Your order was about historic information only, not blueprints from any time beyond that date."  
The visitor did not say anything, he just tried to comprehend the mistake he had made. He was pretty sure that all major powers had by now downloaded and printed out blueprints of technology they could build after the war has ended to accelerate their own technological progress and there was nothing he could do about that now. He could already see F22s and Eurofighters flying through the air, despite the fact that the calender would show 1960. That these stupid AIs always need so clear orders. Damnit.

He grumbled and mumbled a now more exact order to not give the people of this timeline any kind of information beyond the date of 1965 from now on. The visitor thought that the major nations would not protest since by now they would have surely copied pretty much every major technology from now until somewhere in the 21 century.

Then he walked over to the large machine, examining it first with a few skeptic gazes. The he climbed up the ladder and onto the maintenance platforms and looked into several open hatches. The cockpit was nearly identical to the one of a 'Heimdall' Mecha, if it were not for the mechanical displays. Then he noticed a computer-port that would...fit perfectly together with the one of his arm-mounted device, both for computer-control and energy-transfer. He just couldn't believe it.

After nearly ten minutes of inspecting the Mecha he returned back to the waiting scientists.

"You...you even built the bucket seat for my body proportions? You...did build that from the very start with expecting me to be the pilot of the thing?"

The engineers just nodded.

"How did you know I was a Peacekeeper during the last war in my timeline? No wait...the AI did tell you, did it?" Again just nods.

And how did you expect me to get it to the battlefield? It cannot walk on its own from here to the Ukraine."

"The intelligent machine told us you could use your teleport-device to do it. It may not be able to do it in one go, but with several smaller jumps over two days it said it can be done."

The visitor was now really annoyed by all these things that had been done behind his back. He had expected the locals to try to get more advanced tech, but they wanted him to become a pilot of a Mecha and to fight for them...

The interdimensional visitor gave the assembled group of Soviet engineers and officers a stern look, before he talked to them again.

"Okay, you...guileful guys. I will fight for you...BUT, it will be done my way okay? I alone will fight in the Mecha and fight against the lizards in the Ukraine. No debate."

"Allright comrade. For this fight, the 'Mecha' is yours."

Another stern look and the visitor watched the large, bulky machine for a few more seconds. A minute later he was sitting inside the seat, securing the safety belts, then he removed his arm-mounted-device and put it in the designated port.

After a few seconds the large machine came to life.

_Good morning, Dave._

The Soviets watched the machine came to life, lamps lighting up and the machine straightening upwards as if stretching its back.

Then they heard the already known noise that indicated an immediate teleport. A gigantic flash lit up the cavern and the Mecha was gone, only the metal-framework left behind.

**Southern France, the plains of Provence-Alpes-C te d Azur, Earth (Tosev 3)**

Heinrich Jaeger looked through the periscopes of his Leopard 1 for a look around, then lent back and said to his gunner "Lord, it feels good to have some centimeters of steel and some exploding armor all the way around me again," he said.

His gunner, a veteran sergeant named Klaus Meinecke, grunted at that. "Colonel, you don't seem to have done too bad while you were out on your own, either." He pointed to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross that Jaeger wore at his collar.

Jaeger's hand went to the medal. He'd earned it for helping Otto Skorzeny take the town of Split on the Adriatic back from the Lizards. He said, "Sergeant, I was in the infantry during the last war. I thought one round of that had cured me forever. Just goes to show, you may get older, but you don't get smarter."

Meinecke laughed as if he'd told a joke. But Jaeger meant every word of it. Fighting from building to building inside the great stone walls of Diocletian's palace had been every bit as appalling as trench warfare in France a quarter of a century before.

Jaeger looked thorough the periscopes again. "Pretty country," he said.

Klaus Meinecke grunted. "I wouldn't know. All I get to see of it is a gunsight's worth, except when we stop for the night." He smacked his lips. "They make good wine around here, though; I'll give them that much."

"That they do," Jaeger said. "They didn't do badly farther south, either."

He wouldn't let himself venture any more in the way of reproach than that. When he'd left the tank forces in the west to head for Croatia, they'd had the Lizards stopped in their tracks between Besan on and Belfort. Since then, with all their new technology and greater numbers of tanks they got from this extra-dimensional visitor, the combined forced of the Federal Republic of Germany (Jaeger still had a hard time to grasp the fact that the Greater German Reich did not exist anymore now, that the Fuehrer was dead, just as was pretty much anybody of the old leadership, but still...it was still Germany, united and strong and he would fight for it until death) and other nations they had driven back the Lizards to Belgrad and in the West, the forces of Germany and France had been able to push them back far into the south, right where they were now.

"I hope we can push them out of all of Europe now." Meinecke said hopefully.

"Let's hope it keeps up," Jaeger agreed. Rushed into production, the Leopard 1 could be balky. Jaeger was one of the very few officers in the new founded Bundeswehr who actually knew about the secrets of this tank, where it really came from. It may have been built by German hands, but the blueprints were actually coming from the future. Night-vision, a much more efficient engine, a gun so powerful like nothing he has seen before and enough fuel to fill the entire Bodensee... J ger could not think about what would have happened if this visitor would not have shown up.

It was an enormous step forward from all earlier German tanks, boasting a high-velocity 105mm fully stabilized gun and thick, well-sloped armor borrowed in concept from that of the Soviet T-34.

But still...Jaeger knew that if you would not be cautious enough the Lizards would still be able to destroy them. The Leopard 1 was meant to be build in the mid 60s of this century, and the Lizard's military technology was about 1995 standard, according to the visitor. So they were still nor really a match against them

"Wish we had one of those bombs we used to blow the Lizards to hell and gone," Meinecke said. "When do you suppose we'll get one of our own?"

"Damned if I know," Jaeger said. "I wish to God I did."

"If you don't, who does?" the gunner asked.

Now Jaeger just grunted by way of reply. He wasn't supposed to say anything about that to anybody. He'd been part of the band of raiders that had stolen explosive metal from the Lizards in Russia-like Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods, said the part of him that, back before World War I, had planned on becoming a classical archaeologist. He'd taken Germany's share of the material across Poland on horseback, only to have half of it hijacked by Jewish fighters there.

Only luck they didn't kill me and take it all, he thought. In Russia and then in Poland, he'd learned what the Reich had done to the Jews who'd fallen into their hands; it made him sick, so he understood why the Polish Jews had risen in favor of the Lizards and against their German occupants.

Without the help of the visitor they surely would have taken way too long to build up a greater pile of the metals needed to build more nuclear weapons. But now, in the Schwarzwald, in the Ural and in the Hanford Site in Washinton state there were tens of thousands of centrifuges producing high-enriched-uranium to build more bombs, which they would use very, very soon against the Race all at once.

Off to one side of the road, an artillery piece barked, then another and another. "Eighty-eights," Jaeger said, identifying them by the report. "That's good."

Meinecke understood him without any more discussion than that: "So they can fire their salvo and then get the hell out of there, you mean?"

"Right the first time, Sergeant. They're easy to shift to a new firing position-a lot easier than the bigger guns." Jaeger paused meditatively. "And Lizard counterbattery fire is better than anything we ever dreamt of."

"Isn't that the sad and sorry truth, sir?" Meinecke agreed with a mournful sigh. "They can drive nails into your coffin from halfway round the world, seems like sometimes. If there were more of them, and if they had the doctrine to go with all their fancy equipment-"

"-The likes of us would have been dead for quite a while now," Jaeger finished for him. "But that is exactly the point. The 88s cannot hurt them really. But the lizards are still stupid enough to use every guided missile they got to shot down our artillery. You would have thought these little bastards would have learned their lessons by now" Meinecke laughed at that. Down lower in the turret, Wolfgang Eschenbach, the loader, laughed too. He was a big blond farm boy; getting more than half a dozen words out of him in the course of a day was just this side of miraculous.

"I just hope the Lizards use the same kind of flank guards we did when we got stretched thin fighting the Russians."

"How's that, Herr Oberst ?" Meinecke asked. "Me, I was playing games with the Tommies in the desert before they stuck me in the Flying Circus here." When Leopard 1 and Koenigstiger 2 tanks started rolling off the assembly lines, the newly founded Bundeswehr put only the best crewmen into them.

"You, you didn't miss a thing," Jaeger said, mimicking his gunner's diction. "But sometimes we'd have to concentrate our German troops at the Schwerpunkt , the decisive place, and cover our flanks with Romanians or Hungarians or Italians."

"God save us." Wolfgang Eschenbach used up half his daily quota of speech.

"They weren't the worst soldiers I've ever seen," Jaeger said. "They might not have been bad at all if they were decently equipped. But sometimes the Russians managed to hit them instead of us, and it got pretty ugly. I'm hoping the Lizards are concentrating all their best troops up where they're trying to advance. I'd just as soon not have to fight the first team all the time."

"Amen to that," Eschenbach said; Jaeger confidently expected him to fall silent till the morning.

The colonel looked through the periscopes again. In the previous tanks he had to look out of the cupola but that was a good way to get shot, but it was also far and away the best way to see what was going on, and if you didn't know what was going on, you had no business commanding a panzer, let alone a (rather battered) regiment of them. Peering through the periscopes of earlier tanks made you feel safer, but it also made you miss things that were liable to get you killed. Those new periscopes were much more advanced, so there was no need to look out of the cupola.

Northbound shells whistled overhead, undoubtedly the Lizards' response to the Germans' 88s. Jaeger hoped the artillerymen had moved their pieces elsewhere before the shells came down on them.

The countryside began to have the look of a land at war: wrecked and burned farm buildings, smashed trees, bloated dead animals, shell craters pocking fields. Jaeger clucked sadly at the charred wreck of a German half-track. The Leopard 1 rolled past trenches and foxholes that showed the earlier limits of the German push to the south.

Jaeger said, "We're moving forward, anyhow." Against the Lizards, that was no small novelty, and boosted his hopes that they had only second-line troops on their flanks.

Through the rasping roar of the Leopard 1's big MTU Friedrichshafen engine came the rattle of small-arms fire ahead. A couple of German MG-42s were in action, their rapid rate of fire unmistakable-they sounded as if a giant were ripping enormous bolts of thick, tough cloth between his hands. But even without the MG-42s they were no longer so vulnerable than they were before. Now every soldier was equipped with a G3 assault rifle instead of a much less powerful MP40, which the Lizards had experienced pretty fast.

The German tanks deployed for action, moving into their blunt wedge formation: two companies forward, Jaeger's command tank and another company in the middle to support them, and a fourth company in the rear as a reserve. They chewed brown, muddy lines through the green of growing crops.

Without warning, a streak of fire lanced through the air toward a Tiger 1 in one of the lead companies. Koenigstiger tanks had 88mm guns almost as good as the ones Leopard 1's carried, but their armor, though thicker than in the earlier models, wasn't excellent protection even against terrestrial foes, and they have not been able to replace every missing exploding armor plate which worked so effective against Lizard antitank rockets. The K nigstiger brewed up, orange flame billowing and a column of thick black smoke mounting swiftly into the air.

Confused, angry shouts filled the radio. Jaeger grabbed the headset, shoved the earphones into place, and shouted orders into the microphone. The nearest surviving panzer poured machine-gun fire into the thick clump of bushes from which the antitank rocket had come, hoping to flush out or knock down the Lizards who had fired it.

Nothing without armor could have survived that hail of bullets. From more than four hundred meters farther to the rear, J ger watched the bushes writhe under it, as if under torture. But a moment later, another rocket incinerated a German tank.

"They've got one of their troop carriers in there!" Jaeger shouted into the microphone. "Give 'em your main armament." Unlike German half-tracks, the Lizards' armored troop carriers bore light cannon that could chew up any of the older tank models they had here, and carried those rockets on turret rails to either side of the cannon. With them, the troop carriers became deadly dangerous tank killers.

But, while they were formidably armed, they were only lightly armored. They could withstand small-arms fire, but when a tank shell came knocking, they opened up. The German tank slowed down a bit to adjust the canon, even with the stabilized gun it was better to slow down a bit for aiming. Moments later, the bushes went up in flames as part of the troop carrier's funeral pyre.

Jaeger whooped like a Indian. He remembered all too well the bad days of the summer before, when killing any Lizard armored vehicle seemed to require divine intervention. He'd done it himself once, with the 50mm cannon of a Panzer III, but he didn't pretend he'd been anything but lucky.

Yet another rocket streaked out from cover and smote a Panzer IV. The rocket exploded in a ball of flame, but the tank did not brew up. Jaeger whooped again. "The Schuerzen work!" he shouted to the world at large. The hollow-charge warheads of the Lizards' antitank-missiles sent a jet of white-hot flame through armor and into a tank. Some bright engineer had figured out that 5mm plates-"skirts," he called them-welded onto a tank's turret and sides would make the rocket warhead go off prematurely and dissipate that jet. Now J ger saw that the bright idea actually worked in combat.

The advancing German tanks kept on spraying the Lizard infantry positions with machine-gun bullets. Covered by that, German infantrymen ran forward, too. The only opposing fire came from small arms. J ger's hopes rose. If the Lizards didn't have any tanks in this sector, the Bundeswehr really could make some gains.

Then three Lizard helicopters popped up from behind cover, two from out of clearings in the woods and the third from behind a barn. Jaeger's mouth went dry; helicopters were deadlier foes than tanks. They launched two rockets each. One blew a hole in the ground. The other five hit German tanks. Two of the machines survived, but the other three went up in flames. A couple of crewmen managed to bail out of escape hatches; most perished.

Then 30mm rapid-fire antiaircraft guns of a Kugelblitz anti-aircraft-tank started hammering at the helicopters. And it worked. The helicopters sheered away from the antiaircraft guns. Two of them were trailing smoke, though they kept flying. Jaeger prayed for them to fall from the sky, but they refused.

The two lead tank companies were already through what had been the Lizards' front line. They hadn't cleared up all the holdouts; a bullet cracked past J ger's tank and several more ricocheted off the Leopard 1. Like any sensible soldiers, the Lizards were trying to pick off the panzer commanders.

"We're driving them," he said, fixing his eyes to the periscopes . "With luck, maybe we can push far enough to get in among their artillery and do them some real harm."

Just then a Lizard troop carrier that had lain low opened up with a rocket and took out a tank less than a hundred meters from Jaeger's. By luck, he was looking through the periscope that showed where the rocket had come from. "Panzer halt!" he shouted, and then, "Armor-piercing!"

"Armor-piercing." Wolfgang Eschenbach had a dispensation to exceed his daily word quota if in the line of duty. Grunting a little, he lifted a black-tipped shell and set it in the breech of the Panther's cannon.

"Bearing 300 degrees, range 700 meters, maybe a little less," Jaeger said.

The turret slewed anticlockwise. "I see him, sir," Klaus Meinecke said. "Behind those bushes, ja ?"

"That's the one," Jaeger said. "Fire at-"

Before he could say "will," Meinecke fired. With the turret closed, the noise was bearable, but recoil rocked the Leopard 1. The shell casing leaped out of the breech; Eschenbach had to move smartly to keep it from mashing his toes. The acrid reek of burnt cordite filled the air.

"Hit!" Jaeger yelled. "Hit! Got him in one, Klaus. Forward!" That to the driver; stopped, the Leopard 1 was hideously vulnerable to enemy fire. The MTU Friedrichshafen bellowed. The Leopard leaped ahead. The advance went on.

Suddenly Jaeger heard screams through the radio.

"Herr Oberst, I can see about forty Lizards tank from my position heading at your position. I repeat, more tha..." Then suddenly the radio went silent, only static noises were audible.

"Scheisse!" Jaeger yelled out. 40 Lizard tanks...that way way too much. He would need to call for support, aerial support would be the only thing that could save them now. He tried to make contact with one of their small forward bases where they have stationed some Flettner Fl 282 helicopters.

Originally they were only meant for reconnaissance duties, but with the new technology from the future they were now much more powerful. A small plexiglass cover for the pilot, a stronger engine, one MG-42 under the chin and two small wings to fit 8 Panzerblitz III rockets under each wing to fight against tanks. They have been quite effective and the Lizards have been so perplexed by the small helicopters that at the beginning of an attack they would just stare at the little thing and not shoot at it. J ger hoped he could reach them.

But all he got in over the radio was one of several French aircrafts that were flying above them. He wondered what they were up to when he suddenly heard a voice with a heavy German accent.

"Oberst Jaeger, stay where you are. We have seen that you are in trouble and here to help you. Our heavy infantry will take care of these green little bastards."

Infantry? Does he want to drop paratroopers behind the enemy lines to attack them there? He looked through the periscopes to see the small jet-powered aircrafts flying fast over the enemy lines, when suddenly several people jumped out of the vehicle. But instead of parachutes opening...he saw trails of white smoke erupting under them, slowing them down, until they were hovering for a second before flying off at the speed of a fast tank in the direction of the Lizard tanks.

"What in the name of...?"

**Above the Lizard lines**

Jacques pushed the acceleration button and sighed in relief when the turbine of his jetpack roared and two streams of white smoke erupted from the two nozzles at his side, keeping him in the air.

Well, mes amis, we only got 10 minutes before we will run out of fuel so do your best. Vive la France." And with these world all the 30 flying infantrymen flew over to the Lizard tanks.

Jacques could see through the tanks, several lizards looking out of their cupolas and when they spotted them, they were pointing at them wildly but not shooting, they were way too surprised to start shooting, just as the French military has anticipated.

The young Frenchman choose one tank and flew over it, stopped for second and pushed a little button on the control lever. A barely audible noise could be heard from the underside of the fuel-tank as a magnetic mine was released. As it fell on the tank below it, it attached itself on the plating and got activated and just two seconds later the explosive detonated, sending a stream of ultra-hot metal through the plating and destroying the engine of the tank, while Jacques was already on his way to the next tank.

Jacques bent his legs to one side to steer himself into the direction of the next tank, dropping another mine. This time the mine fell directly into the open cupola, the Lizard who was standing inside it, barely managed to get out before the tank exploded sending wrecked metal all around, burning his tail-thump.

The confused Lizard-soldier winced in pain as he rolled around in the dirt. The flying Tosevites were circling around them like a swarm of insects for a few more minutes, destroying several more landcruisers before they all flew off.

For a few more minutes the soldier just sat there, looking around in shock. Burning landcruisers were all around him, and those that were not destroyed were badly damaged.

"By the Emperor, how...can these Tosevites fly...how can..." the thoughts of the soldier were in ruins from the sudden and heavy attack on their group, as he dragged himself away from the battle-scene.

Suddenly he heard and also felt the vibrations of a landcruiser and he sped up to get closer to it, hoping for help. But all his hope was shattered when suddenly a Tosevite tank drove through some bushes.

The Lizard-soldier did stare at the machine for several more seconds, then the landcruiser rotated the turret directly at him. He did not knew how civilized this group of Tosevites were but the only thing he could do now was to surrender to them and hope they would accept his act of submission.

He lifted both his hands above his head and said weakly in the local Tosevite language "Surrender, surrender."

Some more seconds passed by before several German soldiers appeared at the side of the tank. They said nothing, but simply walked over to the lizard, cuffed him and indicated him with a point of their thumbs to follow them. For this member of the Race, the war was over.

**Two days later Pripyat marshes, northern Ukraine, Tosev 3, (Earth), Phase one of Operation Armageddon**

Several lizard tanks were rolling through over the frozen mud. Many of them have already been in several fights with Soviet and German landcruisers and have been called back to regroup deep behind enemy lines, hoping that they will be able to fight back against the Toservites.

One of the landcruiser commanders was standing in the cupola of his vehicle, looking for possible threats. He had already experienced several fights with the Tosevites and he hoped that with the now regrouped battle-groups they would be able to fight the Tosevites more effectively. Back at the start of the invasion they were stretched out way to far to defeat them. But now he hoped they could do it.

He looked through his binoculars looking for possible Tosevite spies.

Suddenly he felt something weird, as if something large had fallen down, sending shockwaves through the ground. The again...and again...and again. It felt like someone extremely large and heavy was walking through the marshes.

He could see several trees shaking about just 100 meters away from him and just a few seconds later...all hell broke loose.

He could hear two landcruiser guns firing and two troop-carriers were flipped over, as the rounds hit their tracks.

The commander was shocked but when suddenly a gigantic machine came WALKING out of the woods, firing with machine canons and guns at them. He could not believe what he saw.

The machine did not walk fast, every landcruiser could have gone faster. But it appeared and attacked so sudden that it had eliminated 6 tanks before anyone could even react.

Several landcruisers started firing at the large thing, but many rounds missed and some even...detonated before they even reached the large thing.

Several minutes later it was over. All tanks of the group had been eliminated, but to the surprise of the tank-commander barely anyone was killed. Most troop-carriers were just flipped over or lying on their side and the landcruisers were 'just' disabled, tracks and guns destroyed. Only the commanding landcruiser was spared.

"YOU! MEMBERS OF THE RACE! SURRENDER NOW AND YOUR LIFES WILL BE SPARED!" a loud voice bellowed out of a loudspeaker from this enormous machine, two spotlights pointed at the leading tank.

The crew of the commanding tank shivered in fear, the commander gulping heavily as the gigantic machine was standing in front of them, both guns pointed at them.

**In orbit around Tosev 3 (Earth) onboard the bannership 127th Emperor Hetto**

The command center of the bannership was in totall chaos. Members of the Race were trying to coordinate a counterattack against the Tosevites who not even one hour ago had started a worldwide attack against their lines.

Nearly two-thousand killercrafts of the Tosevites were in the air above North America, Europe, as well as central and eastern Asia. At the same time thousands of landcruisers appeared suddenly all over their front-lines like demons and atacking them without mercy.

Fleetlord Atvar was already at the brink of mental collapse, first because of the fact that the Tosevites had truly been able to construct machines that did give them the ability to let infrantry fly. But what has nearly caused an heart-attack to the Fleetlord was the fact that they had a war-machine that WALKED on two legs. When the first pictures of this thing appeared on their screens, Atvar was absolutely sure that he has lost his mind. Several members of the crew of the command centers truly lost their minds when they saw it and had to be removed from office and brought to sickbay, some even by force.

Fleetlord Atvar knew that if he would loose his mind too, the entire command-structure would collapse and the Tosevites could overrun them without much of a fight. He had to stay strong for this men and for the Race.

"My Fleetlord, this is flight-leader Dreek" Atvar immediately looked at the source of the one who has called his name. It was the pic on a screen showing him one of the brace pilots that were out there fighting against the Tosevite killercrafts.

"Report to me. Have you been able to destroy the groups of Tosevite killercrafts?"

"Yes, my Fleetlord, but...I don't understand this. They did not resist at all. Only the very first did, but the next waves...just flew by and were shot down by us with ease. I think...they were unmanned, my Fleetlord."

"Unmanned you say?" The lizard looked at the large holographic display. He had ordered more than three quarts of all their killercrafts to join this fight, also several from areas which were totally under their controll. Atvar hopped that if they could stand against this attack, the Tosevites would have used all they have got and the Race could finally conquer the entire planet. But why would they send out unmanned killercrafts? Would he ever understand those creatures?

**Mid-Atlantic, about 30 feet under the ocean surface, nuclear powered submarine USS Nautilus**

"All hands on deck, commencing phase two of Operation Armageddon. One minute left." the captain shouted through the microphone. One minute until four nuclear missiles would be launched from this submarine. But not only from his sub, from hidden places all over the world nuclear missiles would fly into the sky and destroy much of the Lizards equipment in a single blow. All over the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia simple V2 rockets with nuclear warheads in their tips were pointing into the sky, like gigantic fingers which would show the lizards that they are not the masters of the universe, all waiting for the final seconds.

The captain of the sub silently counted down, his eyes fixed on the watch in his hand.

When he reached zero, he pressed the large red button in front of him hard and deep. A single second later, hot vapor sent the first missile on its way, ejecting it out of the sub and to the surface, fractions of a second later the rocket engine ignited and sent the missile on its way. It would draw a simply parabolic course and at its maximum height the nuke would detonate, sending a shockwave of high-velocity-electrons through the atmosphere and destroying all advanced, not shielded electronics, which in this case only the Race possessed.

"God bless the United Stated of America." the captain mumbled after all rockets where on their way.

**In orbit around Tosev 3 (Earth) onboard the bannership 127th Emperor Hetto**

"MY FLEETLORD. WORLDWIDE MISSILE LAUNCHES! 22 MISSILES ON THEIR WAY!"

Atvar could nothing do but gasp as he saw the animation of the missiles on the hologram. There were lines showing their possible trajectory and non of them were heading for them, in fact most of them would simply fall into the sea when they would have reached their maximum height.

While Atvar was still pondering about those weird thinking creatures, the missiles had reached their targets, a height between ninety and one hundred kilometers and one after the other, their nuclear warheads detonated. The strong gamma-radiation hit the upper atmosphere and created high-velocity-electrons which followed the magnetic field of the planet until they hit something they could be conducted into.

Despite the fact that the Killerkrafts of the Race were shielded against EMP, there were always holes for the electrons. Every killercraft lost its communication immediately when the electrons reacted with the antennas of the jets, destroying them totally. The ones that were near enough were so badly damaged that the EMP that destroyed their radios jumped over to neighboring systems and destroyed them too. Many others of the killercrafts had been repaired again and again and therefore there were holes in their hull big enough for the electrons to get into it.

Only about fifteen percent of all fighting killercrafts remained intact, except for their fifty percent just dropped out of the sky and the rest was severely damaged. Similar scenes were seen all over the battlefields of the planet as troop-carriers and landcruisers just stopped driving, halting in their tracks.

Flight-leader Dreek experienced it first hand, when suddenly above him a gigantic flash appeared and mere seconds later all controls of his machine ceased to work. He was lucky that his ejection seat was working mechanically otherwise he would not have been able to get out. While he was hanging there on his parachute he watched the air filled now with more Tosevite killercrafts then Race ones.

About 10 after the nukes detonated hidden underground hangars opened all over the world, in the Alps, the rocky mountains, the Appalachians, the Ural, the Caucasus and many more places, releasing the most modern aircrafts humans had. Northrop F-5s, McDonnell F-4s, MiG-21s, Suchoi Su-15s and many more types, rolling out and getting into the air, whipping the air clean of alien resistance.

Even on board the starships the EMP had its effect, as suddenly maneuver thrusters fired without warning, members of the Race were sent flying through their ships as the starships made sudden movements, injuring many when suddenly metal walls came into their direction, and also destroyed many more important parts.

It took many more valuable minutes before emergency systems took over and their ships were stabilized.

When the situation before the EMP would have been described as chaotic, so it was now a total mess, Their communication was disrupted by the artificial radiation belt created by the nukes, many bases did not even respond at all.

The last thing Atvar heard from the bases in North America and Spain were: "WE HAVE BEEN BOARDED!"


	8. Atvar andAtvar?

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! THIS A BROADCAST OF RADIO FREE EARTH. YOU ARE LISTENING TO RADIO FREE EARTH.

REJOICE PEOPLE OF EARTH. OPEARTION ARMAGEDDON WAS A FULL SUCCESS. THE ALIEN INVADERS HAVE NEARLY BEEN DEFEATED IN EUROPE, IN NORTH-AMERICA AND ALL OF NORTHEN ASIA. THEY ARE NOW ON A FULL RETREAT WITH THEIR LITTLE TAILSTUMPS BETWEEN THEIR LEGS, FLEEING FROM US.

THE LAST RESISTING ALIEN FORCES WITHIN EUROPE AND THE AMERICAS ARE NOW BESIEGED UNTIL THEIR UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER. MEANWHILE THE INVASION OF NORTHERN AFRICA AND THE REUNION WITH THE CUT-OFF FORCES HAS BEEN A FULL SUCCESS. ALL OF NORTHERN AFRICA IS NOW UNDER HUMAN RULE AGAIN.

IN MEXICO US-FORCES HAVE DEFEATED ALL ALIEN FORCES IN MEXICO CITY WHERE THEY WERE GREATED BY THE INHABITANTS AND RESISTANCE FIGHTERS WITH GREAT JOY.

IN THE MIDDLE EAST BRITISH, TURKISH AND SOVIET FORCES HAVE JOINT FORCES WITH LOCAL ARABE AND JEWISH RESISTANCE FORCES AND RETOOK JERUSALEM.

IN CENTRAL ASIA THE RED ARMY HAS STARTED A FULL ASSAULT ON THE CUT-OFF RACE-FORCES IN KAZAKHSTAN AND MONGOLIA.

IN EAST-ASIA AND AFRICA THE REBEL-FORCES ARE NOW DISTURBING THE RACE-LINES ON A CONSTANT BASES, STRENGTEHNIN OUR EFFORTS TO PUSH THE ALIENS FURTHER BACK AND FINALLY OFF OUR PLANET.

THE UNITED NATIONS FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. WE WILL NEVER SURRENDER.

– **In orbit around Tosev 3 (Earth) onboard the bannership 127th Emperor Hetto, one week after operation Armageddon –**

Call after call for help came into the command center of the leading spaceship of the Race. From Spain, from Portugal, Southern Italy, Mexico the SSSR, China, North Africa, South America...simply just everywhere.

The Tosevites had used their own tactic against them, High-Altitude-Bombing. Unlike their own attempt the one of the Tosevites had been much more successful. Dozens of starships were now stranded, unable to lift off and fly to safety behind enemy lines.

The Tosevites landcruisers and killercrafts now outnumbered them nearly everywhere. They had been driven out of pretty much all of Europe and North America. There were only smaller holdouts in Europe, the SSSR and North America left, much of the land that the Race has once conquered had now been recaptured by the Tosevites. South America looked like a gigantic patchwork of red and blue. The only parts of the world that were mostly under control were the Saharan desert, the desert in southern Africa, greater parts of the Middle East, southern and western Asia and large parts of Australia. But this was only because the local resistance forces there did not have large numbers of landcruisers or killercrafts if at all, and their own remaining equipment was better suited for hot and dry environments than the ones of the Tosevites.

Their holdouts were on their own, totally surrounded and inaccessible because of total air supremacy of the Tosevites.

Fleetlord Atvar squeezed his eye-turrets shut for a second and breathed in deeply, just to not think about all this mess for just a second. But the air of the space-ship smelled just stale and used, nearly like he had felt most of the last few months.

He was now facing a second vote on non-confidence, because of the misinterpretation of the last Tosevite assault. He thought it to be a conventional full-scale attack to break through their lines, but in reality it was a trap. They lured out as many forces as they could just to disable their electronics with a massive High-Altitude-Bombing.

And now they were on a full retreat. There were even voices within the group of shiplords for a full retreat from the entire planet, get in a safe orbit where the Tosevites could not reach them and try to solve their problem then. This was totally unusual for the Race, normally a plan of such a scale would include detailed operation lists for several years to come.

Though Atvar had to admit that it sounded like a better plan with every passing hour. There was also now this other option...When the Tosevites had started their High-Altitude-Bombing, one of their ships lost control of its engines and maneuvering thrusters for several minutes. They fired uncontrollably during that time and it nearly dropped out of orbit, before the crew was able to stabilize it, otherwise it would have crashed onto North-America near a city the Tosevites called Las Vegas. One of the Race's physicists had calculated that the impact would have created enough energy that it could rival an explosion of an Explosive-Metal-Bomb. With this new knowledge the physicist had suggested to use the asteroids in the local asteroid belt for what he called 'Space bombardment' .

Atvar wondered why nobody ever had come to this conclusion. This sort of bombardment would not create any radioactive fallout at all and did not include any expensive or difficult to maintain electronics. But he was still hesitating about this...what should he do? Retreat totally from the planet and fly to the asteroid belt and push some of them into a collision course towards Tosev 3? Or should he just send some ships and try to hold out in the deserts of the planet? Each plans had its pros and cons but he was unsure about the consequences.

Atvar would face its second vote of non-confidence in a short time and he was still trying to figure out how to respond to the demands and requests of the shiplords to prevent a possible negative outcome of the vote.

"Erm...my Fleetlord?" a young officer of lower rank asked the Fleetlord for the third time. He was so lost in his thoughts that he did not notice him.

"Yes, was is it?" he bellowed at the officer, loosing his temper for a moment.

"My Fleetlord...we...we are again receiving a strong transmission from the Tosevites and we think it must be a really important one to them because it is broadcasted from everywhere on the planet, on all to us known frequencies and in multiple languages."

The Fleetlord just grunted. He had seen many of such transmissions before but nevertheless he would watch this one too, maybe, just maybe, this time it would proof to be helpful for them.

The large holographic screen lit up behind him, the eye-turrets of all shiplords (except for the ones of Straha who had defected to the Tosevites) turned to the large screen.

Again Atvar wondered how the Tosevites had been able to develop colour television so quickly.

The transmission showed a plaza within a city with large skyscrapers, a large audience in front of a large wooden platform, several flags and banners of the various empire and not-empires of the Tosevites waving at the rear-end of it.

One man stepped forward the microphones and the camera focused on him.

"Citizens of New York City...and the world. What just a few months ago seemed impossible has now been achieved. The alien invaders from outer space are retreating and now we are advancing. It is now us who control the air, the land, the seas again, us who control what belongs to us.

But I know that there have been questions, rumors and conspiracy theories of how we have been able to achieve all of this in such a short span of time. How we were able to skip several decades, so it seems, of technological progress. Some of you were suspecting us to work together with the Race and to a certain extent this was true, that we gained some knowledge by renegades and POWs.

But the truth is that all of this would not have been possible without one man, who offered us his help, to supply us with weapons and information we needed to fight back."

The camera zoomed back showing the whole podium again and fixed on a spot to the right of the person who just spoke. Then a loud whirring noise floated over the audience when suddenly a white flash nearly blinded the camera and many people ducked down in shock, expecting an explosion.

When the flash died down a man in a black full-body armored suit stood there.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you the man who has made this all possible.

And then the president of the USA started to explain, that this man was coming from another dimension, the technologies he gave them, the teleportation device he had used to supply the resistance fighter around the world and many things more.

The members of the Race were watching carefully but Atvar just hissed in disgust. Again the Tosevites citizens had been fooled by their own rulers. Since he knew that nothing this not-emperor said was possible he assumed that they just made up some great sounding story to 'explain' where they got their technology from. Atvar guessed that most of their fast progress was due to capturing Race technology.

But the shiplords were not so sure. Many started to chatter on how this would effect their strategies to defend themselves from the Tosevites and many just sat in their low-G seats scared by the transmission.

Atvar already wanted to tell them to shut up when suddenly the door to the room was slammed open and one of the engineers from the weapon's crew flew into the room like a bullet, straight to the small podium where Fleetlord Atvar was sitting.

"MY FLEETLORD...WE..WE FOUND IT! WE FOUND THE MISTAKE!"

Fleetlord Atvar was irritated by the joy this person was showing, during a time where hundreds, maybe even thousands of males around the planet were dying a meaningless death every hour if they could not find a way to fight the Tosevites effectively again.

"What do you mean, which mistake are you talking about?"

"I meant...the malfunctions in our explosive-metal-bombs. We found out why they were malfunctioning!"

Now the eye-turrets of everyone in the room lit up instantaneously. If that would be true they could crack down the Tosevite assault instantaneously and even with their reduced forces they could then finally take this planet.

"Are you absolutely sure? What was the problem with our bombs?"

"My Fleetlord, because of the low level of computer technology of the Tosevites we did not assume that they were capable of corrupting the programming of our bombs, so that is why we solely concentrated our efforts to find a mechanical failure. But in fact it was a malfunction within the programs that were controlling the bombs. They were corrupted to the point that the bombs would never explode at any circumstances. I just found out by accident that one of the engineers that were responsible for the bombs maintenance had replaced some memory devices from them, because he accidentally broke the original ones. But the new one did not contain the corrupted programming, that is why our last attempt to use our bombs was only partial successful."

Fleetlord Atvar's eye-turrets opened even more at this revelation.

"So...you wanna say that if we replace just the computing systems of our bombs they would be fully operational again?"

"Yes, my Fleetlord we already tried it and as far as we can say the bombs with the replaced computer systems do not contain any corrupted files. We assume that he Tosevites have achieved this by somehow gaining access to our computer network. That is why we disconnected all bombs from the network and also stored them in a sealed room, to make sure they do not gain access via radio-waves."

The Fleetlord was already listening only with one ear to the explanation of the engineer. He had to act now. Screw that vote of non-confidence.

He ordered the shiplord nearest to him.

"I want ten of these bombs used as fast as possible against the large cities on this planet. We have to show these primitives that we are now in control of the situation again. If they will not submit to our

rule after that we will bomb as many cities until they do. No mercy this time."

"But...my Fleetlord...what about this Tosevite from another dimension that has given the people of this dimension all this technology...what if he would intervine?"

"I doubt that he would do that. This person most likely does not even exist at all. My guess is that the leading powers on Tosev 3 just used one of our holographic devices to impress their people."

"That is actual a good idea. Too bad I did not think about this when I had to do this interview, I hate to hold speeches in front of large audiences."

Fleetlord Atvar winced at that sudden response from nowhere, his eye-turrets jerking around.

"Who said that?" he demanded. But the shiplords just looked at each other, giving their Fleetlord confused looks.

"Up here, Fleetlord. Above you."

Both of Atvar's eye-turrets looked up...and he jolted back in his seat, nearly loosing the grip on it, when he saw a Tosevite wearing a black suit, sitting there within the struts of the spaceship. He just sat there, waving down on the surprised assembly of shiplords.

Then with swift move he pushed himself off the ceiling of the room and floated down and with a metal click he landed. Since he did not drift back, a quiet voice in Atvar's mind told him that he would have to wear magnetized boots. But that voice was way too quiet to be really heard over the many questions that were racing through Atvar's mind. How did a Tosevite come on board on the bannership, who is he, what are his intentions...so many questions.

"Colonel Walter Davis. A pleasure to meet you." He saluted. "Looks like it was really a good idea to have a look for myself what is going on here on your ship. I would suggest that you would stop that order to bomb the largest cities on Earth if you want your ships to stay in one piece."

Fleetlord Atvar was unable to speak for several seconds, some of the shiplords were hiding behind their seats, frightened to death by the sudden appearance of this intruder.

"What... who are you?" was the only thing Atvar could ask.

"Well, Fleetlord. As I already said I am Colonel Walter Davis, I am a member of the Armed Forces of the Sol Confederacy from a different dimension and my mission here is to end this conflict as quick as possible."

"So...this transmission we just saw...that was you...but how did you get on board here so fast and without that we noticed it?"

The human folded his arms behind his back and started to explain.

"Well, first of all, what you saw was just a record and second, Fleetlord, it all started when in my dimension we detected a huge fleet of interstellar space-ships in about the orbit of Neptun, or Tosev 8 as you would call it, approaching our inner solar-system. You have to know that we possess a technology that we call just call 'Dimension view'. I dunno if you have ever heard of the many-worlds interpretation, but it simply means that every action that could happen does happen, although in a different universe, and the differences between our two universes was that the 'invasion' of your kind in my universe did happen about two local centuries later.

As we detected this fleet we looked into other dimensions to find out what their intentions were and we found several universes where that fleet appeared too. So we got knowledge of your species to conquer our planet. After we defeated the fleet it was decided by the governments in my dimension to help the human governments of this here universe to gain them as our allies. You may ask why we would do that, well simply because to make sure they do not develop their own Dimension View and use it in hostile ways against us. We want to gain those dimensions that could do that as Allies. And for your question of how I did come on board your ship - I used something we call teleportation, which simply means that the atoms of an object or a person are split up, then sent the atoms via a Einstein-Rosen-bridge or wormhole as others describe it, to its designated goal and rearrange the the atoms to their original configuration"

Fleetlord Atvar listened carefully to the Tosevite in front of him, but most of what he told him sounded just like out of a fantasy novel, without any scientific proof.

"What you just said cannot be true. If something would be possible our scientists would have discovered this kind of technology several thousand years ago. So I ask you again, how did you come on board this ship? Did shiplord Straha use his influence somehow to order a captured pilot to fly you here?"

The human just sighed. "Fleetlord Atvar, everything I said is the truth. I know that you society distrust change and therefore your technology has stopped progressing several ten-thousand Earth's years ago. But let me tell you that..."

The sound of the gunshot resounded through the entire room as the sniper, who was called secretly by one of the shiplords, shot at the intruder. But instead of red blood being splattered around the wall next to him, the bullet hovered in mid-air, only about one meter away from him.

The visitor just looked to his side and saw the bullet and frowned as if just a little bit surprised that someone just tried to shoot him. He reached out and snapped against the bullet, which floated slowly over the surprised audience of the shiplords, rotating, directly back towards the sniper, who was standing inside the door-frame, only supported by a belt to prevent that the recoil would have sent him flying through the ship, and with a metallic click the bullet hit the metal wall.

"If you would be so kind to stop shooting at me, I am just talking to your Fleetlord and try to explain him why it would be the best to stop all the fighting right now."

Then he looked back at the lizard.

"As you can see I posses technology that is way beyond your understanding, but the fact that is does exists, right here in front of you, should show you that I did tell you the truth."

The lizards in the room did not knew what to say. With just one simple action this Tosevite has shown them that he had more power than anyone in the entire fleet possessed. Just then did Fleetlord Atvar notice something that has been bothering him since he saw that person and he started talking to him. Something seemed wrong about him but he could not tell what. But then he realized...the lip-movement of this person did not match what he was saying at all and the pronunciation of all words were correct too, although he knew that Tosevites were unable to do so.

When the fleetlord noted that to the visitor he just said: "Well you have already noticed that I am surrounded by an energy shield that protects me. But it also act as an translator by changing the soundwaves of what I say to the language you are using, and vica versa."

The fleetlord squinted his eyes. It sounded somewhat logical...but how was it possible to manipulate energy to cover a person entirely? He had seen that it was possible just a few seconds ago but his brain was telling him it was impossible since the physical laws told him so.

"So...why are you here then?"

"Well, originally I was sent here to deliver you personally an ultimatum . Surrender to the forces of the UNPE or face total annihilation of all your starships. But well, your plan to bomb the largest cities on the planet has changed the situation. They do know now that you could still inflict heavy damage to the world, now that you have been able to repair your bombs. So now they demand from you to stop fighting, send a delegation to Earth and negotiate with all nations on this planet to achieve a peace-treaty. A refusal to do so would cause...an unpleasant result for your fleet."

Fleetlord Atvar as well as several other members of the assembly of shiplords looked in shock at this person.

"You...you would use this technology of yours to destroy our fleet?" Atvar asked. None of the shiplords dared to move just one eye-turret, all just fixed on the Tosevite intruder.

"Me? No, I can assure that I would not, even if I wanted to. The programming of my machines would not allow it. No, I am talking about ground-to-orbit-missiles that have been stationed all over the world with just one goal: to take out the ships of this fleet. And believe me, there are many military and political leaders that wanted to use them from that moment on where there were enough of them to wipe you out without pretty much no warning time. But there are also some that see that as totally uncivilized.

Again, they ask you now to stop all fighting world-wide and start negotiating. Otherwise... well, you can imagine how a starship would look after it was hit by missile."

"You would not dare to do so. Even if the claim that you are in possession of such technology was true, we would have still enough time to deliver every bomb we have left and drop them on your cities. So it should rather be you who should surrender to us. Otherwise several hundred cities and dozens million of your kind will perish." Atvar said, trying to gain some self-confidence.

"I know this will be hard to believe for you Fleetlord...but the people of this planet would accept this fate. We have a proverb Fleetlord Atvar: 'Give me freedom or give me death'. If you would decide to bomb us, we would annihilate your fleet. This world would take heavy damage, a lot of the industry would be destroyed and countless lives would be lost. But there would be enough people of this world that would survive. They would rise from the ashes, rebuild and focus all their hatred against those who had done that to them, it would unite them even more. The first victim would be your colonization fleet. And then the people of this planet would turn all their hatred against your homeworld and they would not rest until you have experienced the same. It should be you who should think about the options you have. There are exactly two: You can choose peace, end this conflict, negotiate and save many lives with this action. Or you could choose conflict which would cause enormous losses on both sides. But it would be the humans who would have the advantage to survive, simply because of their greater number. It..."

"SILENCE!" Fleetlord Atvar hissed at the Tosevite intruder. "How dare you to demand from us such unbelieveable conditions. I have seen no proof of this anti-starship-missile technology you Tosevites claim to possess. I think you just threaten us without having the possibility to do what you claim you can do. Go now and tell your not-emperors that we will never accept any of such preposterous conditions." The fleetlord was now standing, his back straight to show that he would not be intimidated by this Tosevite.

"So this is your last word?" the Tosevite in his black suit asked.

Fleetlord Atvar just nodded, a gesture he had learned from the Tosevites. He used this one since he was sure that such a primitive creature would not be able to comprehend the delicate body-language of the Race.

The visitor nodded back, a somewhat sad look in his eyes. He lifted his hand to his ears and murmured some words. Obviously he was talking over a small radio to his superiors. After a few moments he looked somewhat surprised and looked back at the Fleetlord.

"Okay, Fleetlord. The leaders of this world surprisingly are giving you one last chance. And to make that decision easier for you they wanted to give you a demonstration of their power."

"What do you..." Fleetlord Atvar wanted to ask, but he was interrupted by the sudden bleeping of the computer console at his side.

"What is it?" he snarled into the microphone. "We have a serious situation here, so no more interrupting!"

"But my Fleetlord..." the voice of a frightened Race-officer could be heard "...we just detected the launch of a missile in northern Deutschland and it seems the missile is heading right at our position."

The shock of the sudden realization that all what the visitor said was true paralyzed Atvar. His body was not tensed up but rather slack. If it would not have been for the near-absence of gravity he would have just sunk into his chair and maybe even slipped of it. Seconds later alarms were ringing as the automated systems of the ship detected the missile and tried to evade it, accelerating the ship.

But Atvar knew it would be futile. Despite all the praise and the fancy painting on their hulls, these space-ships were nothing more than glorified freighters. They would never be able to achieve enough speed to change their course and evade this missile in time. All he could hope for that this single missile would miss.

The missile which had just been launched a few minutes ago from Penemuende was, compared to the highly sophisticated missiles of the Race to speak it bluntly, primitive. It resembled the RS-12M Topol missiles of the USSR from the 1970s, a large ICBM on a truck. But it was way larger and much less computerized.

But this way enough for this task. And despite that it was a piece of cooperation between the USSR, the USA and Germany, the last stage was different in each country. The Soviets had fitted the last stage with about one dozen unguided Katjuscha rockets which would be launched when the last stage would be near the target. This way the missile acted like a gigantic shotgun. Many of the Katjuschas would miss, but also many would hit. This way they could work without a complicated guidance system. The American system consisted of 7 missiles in the last stage, one would be guided manually while the rest would follow the leading missile via radar. The German guidance system for the last few kilometers was just a simple camera in the nose of the last missile stage, so someone from a ground-station would guide the missile to its target.

Each of these systems had its pros and cons. The Soviet one did not need a complex guidance system, but there was the danger of a total miss of course. The American system would give them more security when it came to finding and hitting a target, but there was also the problem that because the missiles were smaller than their German counterpart that it would not cause as much damage to the ship. The German last stage in fact did not contain any warheads or missiles or anything similar. It was just a large body of steel with a manual guidance system. With such a large mass and velocity it could punch through an entire ship with ease. But here was also the problem that you needed a really, really good-trained person to guide the stage to its target. Otherwise it would miss and there would be no second chance.

It seemed that for this demonstration they really found someone with very good eyes and reaction-time since it was a perfect hit, right at the center of the ship. And this was also where Fleetlord Atvar was.

Fleetlord Atvar and most shiplords were catapulted through the room as the last stage hit the ship, piercing through the hull as if it was not even there, destroying life-support-systems and cross bracing, punching through deck after deck, carving a tunnel through the entire ship before it escaped to the other side of the ship in mere milliseconds.

As Atvar realized what has happened he somehow felt no hatred or fear. There was just a calm feeling as he realized he would die and with him the command structure of all the Race forces in this solar system would collapse. He heard the air escaping through the hull breach and waited to be sucked out into space where his body fluids without any air-pressure would start to cook within seconds, and every bubble of air would expand explosively, ripping his body apart, all of this happening at the same time.

But to his surprise...nothing of this happened. Did he die so quickly that he did not even realize it and was he already in the afterlife, where he would serve all the past Emperors? He secretly wished that the past Emperors would look kindly on him, since he had done all that he could to fulfill his mission.

Instead of the voices of the past emperors he heard the voices of the shiplords, whimpering in pain. He opened his eye-turrets slowly and saw that he was still inside the ship and that several shiplords were thrown at the walls around him, some bleeding from wounds, other with twisted limbs. And when he turned around he was sure that his heart stopped for several beats.

At the rear end of the room he could see two large holes on each site. He could see stars through the holes and debris and small clouds of gasses drifting around and into the open void. But he could also see the Tosevite who was still there, one arm outstretched and a blue translucent energy-field emanating from his hand, cutting off the damaged segment of the ship from the rest, keeping the air inside the ship and the debris out of their proximity.

Fleetlord Atvar pulled himself slowly to his console and asked for a report. To his surprise there were no casualties, though several hundred members of the Race had taken serious injuries from the impact of the Tosevite missile.

But Atvar was far from being finished with being surprised. Suddenly the debris behind the energy-field started to drift towards the hull-breaches on both sides, starting to glow red, then orange then white, melting and forming a white mass, which started to fuse with the hull, sealing it and making the ship air-tight again. After several more seconds it was all over. The Tosevite lowered his arm and the energy-field ceased to exist.

Some of the shiplords winced as it did, fearing that they still would be sucked out into outer space.

"Fleetlord Atvar. I ask you to think really good about what you say now. You should have finally realized by now that you cannot win this conflict as you wish to. But you have also the possibility to not loose. You just have to order your troops to stop fighting and start to negotiate with the inhabitants of this planet."

The Fleetlord looked around, frightened, unsure, paralyzed, scared...so many emotions were running through his mind and body, he could barely think straight. The human visitor tilted his head as Atvar was still hesitating.

"Good Fleetlord. If you are still unsure...there is one person that can help you to find the right solution, one person that you can trust without any doubt and who would be pleased to help you in your situation."

The Tosevite reached into a pocket on his belt and pulled out a small silver and golden shining sphere and threw it into the direction of the Fleetlord. It stopped just a few meters away from Atvar and slowly began to glow brighter.

"Fleetlord Atvar...may I introduce to you...Fleetlord Atvar."

After several seconds the sphere vanished behind a hologram that was more sophisticated than anything Atvar has ever seen. But as he heard who this should be...he could not say anything, his breath stopped in his throat as he realized that the hologram was truly showing himself.

"This...cannot be...this must be a trick...you are still trying to deceive us..." Atvar said weakly, his grip on his chair unstable

"I know this may seem impossible to you. But it is the truth. I am Fleetlord Atvar, the commanding officer of the Conquest Fleet for Tosev 3. But I am the Atvar of the universe this Tosevite is coming from." the hologram said and pointed at the visitor.

Atvar's eye-turrets were wide open, both of them fixed on nothing else but this hologram. He tried to reason that it can be, that it had to be some sort of trick. That maybe the Tosevites again were using a captured holographic projector...

"Fleetlord of this universe, I know this is hard for you to understand and even harder to believe. But how about you two discuss in private in one of the adjoining rooms? There the Atvar of my universe can proof that he is you."

The hologram looked briefly at the visitor, then back at the other Fleetlord, a pleading look in his eye-turrets, not to do anything stupid.

Atvar watched the two, the hologram and the visitor for nearly two minutes saying nothing, before he just nodded weakly and pushed himself off the chair cautiously and drifted to the passage to his private quarters. The hologram followed him.

On his way he saw several wounded Race-members whose eyes widened in shock to see two Fleetlord. But they did not say anything.

After the two Atvars arrived at his quarter the first thing he did was just let out a long desperate sigh, as if he could let out all his frustration. Nothing has happened as he had planned for. He had thought himself to be called one day 'Atvar the Conquerer' to be never forgotten and always be remembered. And now...

He drifted to his desk, several personal objects floating through the air, torn away from the desk from the impact of the German missile. Under all the objects that were floating through the air was also the holographic projector that has activated itself, showing the Tosevite in his iron- and furry wraps, wielding a sword. The small holographic Tosevite made several somersaults before the projector hit the wall, deactivating it.

The holographic Atvar just watched his counterpart in silence.

Atvar looked into one of the drawers and was pleased to find that at least the bottle of brandy from Home was intact. He had bought this bottle to celebrate his victory over the Tosevites. But now it seemed it would rather serve as a obituary of their defeat.

He opened the bottle with his claws and took a small sip of the alcohol, savoring the taste of amber coloured liquid. He had endured so much in the last week that he wanted to enjoy at least one single moment of pleasure. Then he looked at the hologram who was still hanging in the air, silent.

"You know...I still do not know what I shall think about you. From what I know you could also be a construct of the Tosevites, programmed to tell me what they want me to hear. Besides, even though we seem to live longer than the Tosevites, even you should be dead by now, if it is true that the conquest fleet arrived two hundred years later than we did. There should be another Fleetlord."

The hologram just sighed.

"I cannot blame you that you do not trust me and I can assure you, that if I would have been in your position, I would not have reacted any different. But rest assured I lived through the same things you experienced with the only difference that our space-ships had suffered a malfunction prior to the launch of the conquest and that it was decided to examine every single ship from prow to stern, while all the soldiers, shiplords and myself would be kept in cold sleep during the examination. This examination lasted for nearly two centuries, before all malfunctions were removed from the ships."

Atvar just shook his head, taking another small sip from the bottle. He did not drink to get drunk, no way, he wanted to stay as attentive as possible, but he also wanted his tongue to taste something wonderful after all the horrible things he had endured. But it was a hard fight not to sip down the entire bottle.

"Still...This still does not proof that you are who you claim to be. I could only believe you if you tell me something that only I, Fleetlord Atvar, could have knowledge of. If you are another Fleetlord Atvar than tell me."

The hologram seemed to ponder about what to say. Then he looked at Atvar again.

"Do you remember when I was young, the educational institution where I was assigned to did not allow any pets. But one day I found a young beffel, which was wounded. I tried to nurse it back to health secretly without the tutors knowing of it. Unfortunately I did not succeed and it died a few weeks later. I named this beffel...Talo."

As Atvar heard this name he finally accepted the truth. No one ever had heard this name, not his friends at school, not Kirel...nobody. So this hologram truly had to be the projection of a person that was himself.

"So...what now? What do you suggest what I should do?" he asked his other me.

"I can only advise you to accept what the Tosevites are offering you. Compared to the Tosevites I have encountered these here are much more primitive, when it comes to their society and mindsets. Even the Tosevites here in my universe see it like this. The Tosevites of your era are very narrow-minded and easily offended. So I would suggest to watch carefully what you tell them."

"Are the Tosevites in your universe really that different? I mean...yes, they may have changed a lot in the past centuries. But in just two more hundred years so much more...that is still so hard to imagine."

"Let me show you, Atvar." the hologram said, concentrating on a small device on his arm, similar to the one of the Tosevite visitor.

Mere seconds later a holographic display appeared next to him.

"This is how we were defeated, Atvar. Watch carefully."

"This is Isabelle Hunter and I am on board the space-ship Ayad Akhtar for the Sol-News-Network. We accompany the fleet of the Sol-Confederacy which is on their way to intercept the conquest fleet of an alien species that simply calls themselves 'the Race'. As our viewers may remember, we gained knowledge of their existence with the help of the Interdimensional Institute in Geneva about one and a half year ago.

The Race fleet has stopped for now in a high orbit around Mars and we are now on our way to confront them. As far as we know this species barely has made any technological progress in the last fifty-thousand years or even more, and also think that other species progress with the same speed as themselves. So they are surely in for a surprise when they will find out that this fleet is human-made and not from another solar-system.

Admiral O'Neil, can you tell us what will be your tactic if the fleet will face them?"

Another screen flickered up, showing a male Tosevite wearing a complex uniform of white colour.

"Well, Miss Hunter, first we will introduce us in a friendly manner and will confront them with our fleet. I am pretty sure that we can avoid a battle since their ships are totally unarmed. No lasers, no particle canons, no missile pods, no plasma accelerators, no mass-drivers, nothing. They may be conservatives when it comes to technological progress but I am pretty sure that they are not stupid and that they will surrender to us as soon as we have demonstrated our capabilities. And it seems we are now in sight."

Atvar watched in silence as a third screen appeared showing him obviously the outside-view of the ship this O'Neil was in. He could see three more Tosvite ships and in the distance he saw several bright shining dots which must be the Race fleet.

The Admiral cleared his throat before he ordered to open a channel to the Race fleet.

"This is Fleet-Admiral Jack O'Neil of the combined fleet of the Sol-Confederacy. Your fleet has violated our borders which is seen as a hostile act against us. So state you intentions. Any refusal to comply will be seen as a hostile act and we will respond accordingly. Which means putting some large holes in the hull of your ships."

A few moments passed.

"Alien being, I am Fleetlord Atvar. How is it that you understand the language of the Race? Who are you to threaten the conquest fleet of the Race?"

"Well, we detected your fleet already some time ago. And since your communication between your ships was not encrypted at all it was easy enough to decipher your language and program our computers accordingly."

"We have never heard of this Sol-Conferderacy" Atvar said, hissing the words. "We discovered this planet first! I will not allow you unknowns to upset the plans of the Race" Atvar said. "Where is this Sol-Confederacy you are talking about?"

"Fleetlord Atvar. To make one thing sure from the start. The sun of this system here, the one you call Tosev, is called Sol by its inhabitants and these ships you are seeing are made from these inhabitants. We call us humans and we will not allow you to conquer our planet or any territories within this system."

"You lie. Tosevites do not have the capability of spaceflight or are able to construct radio communications equipment. Tosevites are at an agricultural level of development. Our probes have confirmed this. How did you get here!?"

"Man, what stubborn little creatures they are." the Fleet-Admiral mumbled. "Fleetlord Atvar if you will not believe us we can arrange a meeting on the planet below us so you can see it for yourself if we are telling you the truth or not. I don't know if you have noticed them, but there are about two dozen domed cities below us. I would even let you choose in which one we could meet."

For several minutes there was no response and Atvar looked at the hologram of his counterpart and wondered how he decided to respond back then.

"Did they get our message?" Fleet-Admiral O'Neil asked another Tosevite near him.

"Yes Sir. They definitely did. But for some reason they decided not to answer us."

Suddenly another Tosevite said: "Sir. Missile launch from the leading ship of the enemy fleet. It looks like they just dropped one of their nuclear missiles out of their hangar. I guess they have spotted us early too and prepared some of their missiles for space-combat."

O'Neil looked at a small screen at his side. "Anything that can harm us?"

"No, Sir. According to the computer it is just a low-yield nuke. I would say like Fat Man."

The Admiral just nodded. "Well Gentlemen, looks like the Race is not in the mood for a little chat right now. All decks battle-station. Shields at max. Do not engage the missile. Let it hit our shields, hopefully that will show them that they are no match for us."

For the next several minutes Atvar watched on another screen the little dot that was flying from one fleet to another. The Admiral yawned as the fifth minute passed by and the missile was still on its way.

"Man, can't they speed up a bit with trying to kill us? I got an appointment with the General Secretary of the UN on Phobos and I don't want to be late just because some small space-lizards are throwing undersized nukes at me."

Atvar gasped at rude and ironic response. He watched the missile getting nearer and nearer, the camera zooming in and darkening automatically as the missile detonated, but is was at least fifty meters away from the ship itself. A blue hull of energy was seen briefly as the plasma of the explosive-metal-bomb expanded. After a few more seconds it was over and the ship was still floating there.

"Everyone alright?" the Fleet-Admiral asked. The lights of the ship did not even flicker during the attack.

"Yes Sir. The shield's energy dropped by not even one percent and we are already back to full strength. If they do not decide to throw something bigger at us, they are hardly a threat to us."

O'Neil just grinned and activated the com-channel again.

"Okay, I am calling this Fleetlord Atvar again. As you can see your most powerful weapons are useless against our ships. How about you stop acting like a young hatchling and we talk face to face?"

Atvar cringed at this insult. He could not imagine how his other me must have felt in that situation.

Again for several more minutes nothing happened, until...

"Sir. More missiles are launched again from the same ship, five missiles this time. Again heading for us."

"Man. They really seem to not understand it. Okay then. Let's show our claws. Sentinel lasers on that missiles. Take them out."

The missiles did not even get one-hundred kilometers away from the Race fleet when the powerful free-electron-lasers hit the missiles and simply vaporized them. Atvar's tail stump trembled. Because of the translation he new that it were skelkwanks that have taken out the missiles. How...how in the name of the Emperor...

"Okay folks. Last chance now. Just accept that you are not as advanced as we are. One more time and I will get really angry."

They did not have to wait for long.

"Sir, you will not believe it. But they launched missiles again. This time from three different ships, but all seemed to be dropped out of the hangar of the ships."

"Tzk. I take it back. They are just plain stupid." the Admiral sighed. "Okay then. Sentinels again on that missiles. Fleet-Admiral O'Neil to all main battleships, report in."

"Charlemagne here. Ready to rumble."

"Sun Tsu ready for battle."

"George Washington all hands on deck."

"Sir Francis Drake ready for action."

"Neil Armstrong, awaiting commands."

"Theresa Khrushchev is ready to show them where the hammer hangs."

"This is the battleship Theodore Roosevelt. All battleships target the nearest Race-ship's rear and melt it to slugs."

Atvar wondered what would happen next when suddenly bright purple beams erupted from the front of the ships, moving fast towards the Race ships. In an instant the unmanned rear with the engines and other parts of seven ships ceased to exist. He grabbed his seat's armrest tightly, barely able to comprehend what just happened. He was just glad that he had not to experience that first hand.

"Okay, now you stubborn little lizards. You did it. We are now quite pissef off. This was our absolute last warning. Fire more nukes at us and we will target the rest of your ships. But this time we will aim better. And it will be your fault, Fleetlord Atvar, that millions of your men will die just because you were too stubborn and refused to talk with us."

After a few more seconds the shocked voice of the Fleetlord was audible. ""Sol Fleetlord, what is it that you want?"

"Again I am Fleet-Admiral O'Neil, with one l, and what we want is to get on board your ship as soon as possible now. I think it is really time now we meet face to face before I have to give an order to turn your entire fleet into scraps."

Again for nearly a minute the radio was silent. Then: "Despite the fact that you attacked us and rendered several of our ships useless I will allow a small group of you to come on board our ship where we will discuss who is truly the owner of this system."

"I cannot wait to do so, Fleetlord. O'Neil out." O'Neil said sarcastically. Then he deactivated the channel between the two fleets.

"Wow, that was quite impressive Admiral, how you handled the situation. What do you hope to achieve when you are meeting them?" the journalist said.

"Miss Hunter to speak it bluntly, these little space-lizards are quite annoying. I will tell them from face to face that if they do not comply now and surrender to us, that we will fight them and defeat them and then drag the remaining ones on their tail-stumps to Earth where they will be held as POWs, until someone else decides different."

"Good Sir, I am going with you. And I do not want to hear any complaints that I am not capable for something like that. I interviewed Pashtun warlords in Afghanistan and while being under fire in Bangkok during a communist terrorist attack. I am coming with you."

Atvar blinked in astonishment as this female Tosevite talked without any respect to the Fleet-Admiral. In the Race society something like this would be totally unimaginable.

"Good. But no teleportion. They are already frightened enough and I don't want them to die of a heart attack when one of us suddenly appears inside their ship. That would be embarrassing. Besides I would have to do a lot of paperwork, explaining how I managed to kill a space lizard without even touching one."

Fleetlord Atvar watched the scene for several more minutes, seeing how several Tosevites were getting into large armored space-suits. They looked weird, their head nearly totally buried by large shoulder plates. They walked into a shuttle that was heading for the Race fleet just a few seconds later.

He tried to figure out what he would have done in such a situation and looked again at the hologram of his counterpart, who just nodded back at the screens.

The Tosevite shuttle just flew into the shuttle bay and the Tosevite astronauts floated into the airlock which was just big enough to hold three of them at the same time. So it took two rounds before all of them were through.

On the other side a small group of Race soldiers awaited them, ordering them to follow them to the command center of the ship. About one minute later they arrived there where Fleetlord Atvar and several shiplords were standing (or at least it looked like they were standing, since they were holding handles to prevent floating away in low G).

Fleet-Admiral O'Neil opened his helmet of his space suit, the platings that made up the helmet retreated to the back of the Tosvetive's head and the members of the Race gasped as they saw that O'Neil was truly a Tosevite.

"Good. You can see I am a human, or Tosevite as you call us" he said without waiting for anyone of the members of the race to say something.

"Fleetlord Atvar, the High-Coordinator of the Sol-Confederacy, the General Secretary of the United Nations of Earth, the President of the 12 Luna-Republics and the Prime Minister of the Ares-Union ordered me to see if it is possible that we can co-exist with one another without resorting to armed conflict that would cause the death of countless lives."

"Your representatives of your world are wise," Atvar responded. "What are the terms for your planet to submit to the Race?"

"Excuse me, Fleetlord. Earth, or Tosev 3 as you call our planet, as well as the inhabitants of its moon that we call Luna and the ones of Mars, or Tosev 4, will not submit to the Race. That is not the purpose of this meeting."

The Atvar on the screen looked surprised."You colonized your atmosphere-less moon and this waterless planet below us? You are truly a weird species." He let out a snarl to show how amused he was about that strange species that used so much resources to colonize such hostile celestial bodies. "Nevermind. Correct me if I am in error," Atvar said. "You have come to this vessel discuss co-existence without resorting to more conflict. If your rulers believe this to be true, then you are here to negotiate a surrender of Tosev 3 to the Race and all other inhabitable areas in that system."

"Fleetlord Atvar, I am not here to discuss surrender of our worlds to the Race," O'Neil answered. "I have come here in order to avoid the unnecessary deaths of your invasion fleet. But before we discuss the details...there are things that must be clarified in order for you to understand the position that you are facing. The planet Earth, the moon Luna and the planet Mars are home to over 11 billion Human beings who will not allow a colonization fleet from another planet to set their feet on the surface of our homes."

Both Atvars, the one on the screen and the one watching the screen gasped briefly at the number O'Neil said. He thought about that for several seconds before he answered, trying to strengthen his stand.

"So you pretend that you Tosevites are split up into several factions that compete with each other, while inhabiting several celestial bodies?" Again he snarled an to O'Neil unknown hiss. "What an inefficient way to rule your species. This truly shows that you Tosevites need the help of us to truly unify your species."

One of Atvar's eye turrets focused on the Fleet-Admiral while the other one swiveled around eyeing the other creatures, who were carrying large weapons that seem to be integrated into their suits.

"I propose that your Empire, the United Nations of Earth should be the authority of all Tosevites. I suggest to use our resources to assist in your political government's conquering all Tosevite areas. In this way, your rulers will be in position of leadership forever, subjected only to the authority of the Race."

O'Neil frowned at that statement.

"First Fleetlord, the UN is not one single entity, nor is it an empire. It is more like a union of nearly 150 nations and second, the UN does not wish to rule by force and nobody of us will never willingly submit ourselves to anyone, including your kind. That you suggest such a thing proves that your leadership is not as smart as they think they are."

Atvar's tail-stump (the one on the screen) started to twitch, a sign of irritation and also frustration. Why was this Tosevite behaving so irrational?

"I do not understand your reluctance to see that such an arrangement would be really helpful for you Tosevites. The other Tosevites will follow your. We had a stable government for thousands of years longer than any of your civilizations. If you would be subjects of our Empire, we would rule you in wisdom and peace and you will come to worship the Emperor as we do."

As Atvar mentioned his ruler he lowered his eye turrets for a moment as did the other members of the Race.

"Everyone would benefit from it. So inform your ruler of our proposal. You also should show him this." Atvar handed him a sheet of what looked like weathered paper.

O'Neil inspected the alien scripted documents. "What's that?"

"This is the official treaty proclaiming the legal right to Tosev Three. We discovered that world two thousand years ago." the Fleetlord replied. "We sent a probe sixteen hundred years past to determine its value. The Emperor," had he bowed his eye turrets once more, "approved of the world and these documents were generated giving us legal possession of Tosev Three and the star system in which it resides. The Emperor's stamp is right there beneath his venerated name."

"And what about us?" the Fleet-Admiral asked, as he just looked on the document.

"Tosevites had little understanding of legal matters. Their ignorance precluded any useful negotiations. The Race is stronger and it is ours by rights because we can take it."

"Fleetlord. I got a message for you. First, we have been on this planet before you you discovered it, we were here before you launched this conquest fleet and we will still be here when your empire crumbles to dust. We will not allow any hostile aliens to come here and set their clawed feet on our soil because they think they own it because it is their god-given right." the Fleet-Admiral said. " This is not a treaty, it's a one-sided declaration of annexation. Your document is not worth the medium it is written on. Why would you think that this document would have any meaning to us?"

To Atvar's great annoyance he heard Straha's, "I told you so," all too clearly.

"I understand you now much more clearly" spoke the Fleet-Admiral. "You conquered other races because you were strong and they were weak."

"Yes. It is the way of things."

"If this is the way of things then I have a counterproposal. I propose that the Earth forces go to Home, kill the Emperor, wipe out any resistance and make you the new Emperor under our control. What do you think about that?"

Atvar heard the words, took a second to realize their importance, and jumped back horrified at the very thought. "Commit Emperor-cide? Never! How could you think of such a horrid prospect? You Tosevites are truly ignorant savages to imagine such a thing! To even contemplate such a thing is to declare war on the Race. How could you Tosevites even think about something like that?"

"Well, it happened quite often in our past, Emperor-cide I mean" suddenly another Tosevite said. It was that reporter from before. She removed the armor plating of her helmet just like O'Neil and looked at the Atvar on the screen. "Let me explain it to you how it happened on Earth. If an Emperor got corrupted by power and did rule over and not for his people, which I have to add happened quite often, these people quite often thought, it would be best to get him out of the way. And the suggestion of the Fleet-Admiral was just to show you how we feel about our world," she responded to the furious Lizard. "It is the same emotion that you feel now. Your claims of being civilized have, some as you say, grains of truth. But you have refused to listen to or believe what we have tried to tell you. You may believe that you are advanced, but you are not as advanced as you believe," she said trying to phrase the words so that Atvar would clearly understand their meaning.

Then O'Neil nodded to one of the faceless astronauts who stretched out an arm and a split-second later a glowing, translucent blade extended from his wrist. It looked similar like the force-field the visitor has used to protect Atvar and the fleetlords from the German missile. The Tosetive soldier on the screen waved his energy sword quickly over the wall, but no damage was visible. To the surprise of everyone he grabbed wall segment and just lifted it away, showing that he had cut it out in a perfect circle with his sword.

The ship-lords and Fleetlord Atvar gasped in shock as the Tosevites demonstrated their technological superiority..

"I guess that this little demonstration here should show you again clearly that it is us who are technological more advanced, Fleetlord. These men here could take out this entire ship alone and cut it into little pieces that are each smaller than your claws. But unlike you, who use their power to reign over the weak, we do not. We could easily defeat you, right now, take you all prisoners and enslave you."

"We will fight you!"

"Then you would loose, Fleetlord. I cannot believe how stubborn you are." the Fleet-Admiral mumbled. Then he fumbled at a small box his arm, opening it and took out a sheet of white paper, handling it over to the Fleetlord.

"This Fleetlord is the official document of your surrender. Sign it and obey to the conditions mentioned in it and there will be no need to fight. Don't sign it and we will enter your fleet by force. The choice it yours."

The Atvar on the screen took the sheet of paper, his fingers trembling a bit that one one side of it there were clearly written Race signs, while on the other one where Tosevite ones. After he read through it for several minutes he looked at the Fleet-Admiral again.

"You...you demand a complete disarmament of all our troops? That is simply...hideous, totally unacceptable. How should we even be able to protect ourselves from you aggressive Tosevites?"

Before anyone could say anything else the typical ring-tone form Nokia buzzed through the room, stopping the conversation. The Fleet-Admiral looked surprised at a small holographic screen that suddenly appeared over his screen, and looked even more surprised when he saw who was calling him.

"Oh, nice, speaking of the devil. Well, Fleetlord, you are lucky. Now you can talk to the highest representative of humankind."

After pressing two more buttons on the hologram another hologram, emitted from the wrist of the Fleet-Admiral, of a woman wearing a night-blue suit appeared.

"Good day to you, Fleet-Admiral. I've heard that you experienced some problems with our...guests, intruders, enemies, however we may call them?"

"Well, Madame High-Coordinator, it was nothing we couldn't handle. We only need the signature and the approval of Fleetlord Atvar here..." he pointed at him "...to prevent anymore fighting. But we have come already to a problem. It seems they don't like it when we take their guns away."

The hologram of the the female Tosevite turned around and looked at Atvar.

"So you are the commander of this fleet that tried to wage war against us without any kind of provication?"

The Fleetlord on the screen blinked a few times, trying to handle the fact that several Tosevites were on his ship, threatening everyone of them and using high-technology they were not meant to have, at least from the point of view of the Race. "Yes, I am. My name is Fleetlord Atvar, commander of the conquest Fleet of the Race, destined for the planet Tosev 3."

"And I am Cathrine Clinton, High-Coordinator of the Sol-Confederacy, which includes all space, settled by our species. So what are the problems you claim that are in this document?"

"You demand from us to give up every kind of weapon we would need to protect ourselves from you. This...Fleet-Admiral said that you are still divided among yourself. If we would surrender to you, how should we be sure that not one of these factions would attack us?"

The hologram of the High-Coordinator looked back at the Fleet-Admiral. "Is that really much of an issue, Admiral? I mean, you know best what their fighting capabilities are. You think they are a threat to us?"

"As far as we know Maam, no. Even a local police unit from Botswana could handle their tanks, they just use old-style stuff we had at the beginning of the millennium."

"If that's the case...let's change this sole paragraph that only their WMDs will be disarmed and that they will not be allowed to produce any."

The Atvar who looking at the screen, swallowed hard, trying to handle the scene he was watching. Those Tosevites were acting so...from above, like he was just a young child who had no right to say anything.

"I cannot imagine what you must have felt during that time. This is just..." he said to the hologram, but never finished the sentence.

"To tell you the truth, it was even worse than what you could see here. And yes...I signed this declaration of surrender. I had to fight with myself so hard. I truly wanted to finish my mission my Emperor gave me, to conquer that planet. But I had to accept the fact that we would have been no match against them. We could have fought but the only difference in the final result would have been the number of casualties. And if it was not humiliating enough...after I signed the treaty, they invited me to a space station around Earth...I mean Tosev 3. They brought me and some other Shiplords to their home-planet with a ship they called 'Stephen Hawking' within seconds."

"You mean...this ship would be able to fly faster than the speed of light? But that is impossible. Our scientists have proved tens of thousands of years ago that nothing could even come close to the speed of light." he exclaimed to his other me.

The hologram just sighed again. "As one of their scientists said: 'Believing it for thousands of years doesn't make it true. It only means that you have been believing into a mistake for that time.' Atvar...we thought that it had to be true because we did not change our view on this for thousands of years. That was our mistake. Humans...Tosevites always question everything and that seems to be their power, the thing that let them develop so fast. I am still afraid of this...but also must admit...this it is quite fascinating. They have managed to develop a society that embraced technological and social progress while maintaining some sort of stability."

"So...you mean...in order to protect ourselves and Home...we have to change ourselves?"

"Yes. I know...this is hard to accept. But it is the only thing we, or rather you, can do now. As your visitor said, peace of conflict, living or dying...these are the two options you have. Please don't make the wrong decision."

The Atvar in the seat did not reply for now, licking up a little drop of the liquor from the neck of the bottle. He thought about every single word that his other me had said...and came to the conclusion that he was right. At this point now the only right thing would be...peace. He looked up, into the eyes of the hologram.

"I have made a decision. To stop the fighting between the Tosevites...and our forces I will agree to a cease-fire, until we have negotiated a peace-treaty."

"I am glad you came to this conclusion, although I already thought you would do so. You are me after all." He made a cough to signalize his chuckle.

Together they mad their way back to the hall where many of the ship-lords were still gathered, their wounds both tended by their own medical workers, as well as the visitor.

The human smiled happily that Atvar has come to the conclusion that only a peace-treaty could end this conflict now fast.

"That is good to hear, Fleetlord. It would have been a shame if you would have decided differently."

Then he contacted the political leaders of this world and told them that they agreed for a peace-conference on at a place that had yet to be chosen, probably best on neutral ground, where ever that may be. Atvar gave all soldiers a call that if they were out in the field that they should retreat to their bases, while he listened to the radio-broadcasts that that the various Tosevite factions broadcasted, telling all soldiers to stop fighting.

When they started talking about which place may be best suited for a peace-conference, again their conversation was interrupted by the intercom.

"You know, you really have a bad timing, soldier, always interrupting me during my conversations. What is it now?"

"My Fleetlord...it's those Tosevites...they have launched rockets again!"

"WHAT!?" both Atvars and the visitor exclaimed. They just couldn't believe it.

Atvar (the one out of flesh and blood) looked in horror at the visitor, who looked back just as horrified. Had the Tosevites betrayed both of them, now that they thought they were safe, getting rid of the alien invaders and the human from another dimension, trying to keep all the high-tech for themselves?

The visitor hastily opened over a dozen holographic screens and a visualization of the planet with the launching points. One was in the northern USSR, one in northern Germany again and one on the West-Coast of the USA.

With great speed he opened screens and closed them, trying to figure out what was going on. Atvar quickly realized form the trajectories of the rockets that they were not on a course for the fleet.

All of a sudden the visitor started laughing. He laughed so loud and heartily that it nearly hurt in Atvars ear-holes.

"What is so funny about that, I thought we would really die now." he said angered by the sudden joyful break-out.

"Sorry...it is just so...ridiculously funny. They seemed all to have planned this individually, behind my back, I had not even remotely considered that they would do that, and yet they launched them nearly all at the same time."

"But...what for?" Atvar asked.

"Just watch, Fleetlord. You asked yourself why humans progressed so fast? Well here is your answer."

After several more minutes, the rocket launched from Russia seemed to have reached its final destination. The hologramm enlarged to show that the missile released something. It was a small sphere with four long spikes on its rear. Suddenly small, growing rings appeared around the hologram of this thing and Atvar assumed that this meant it started to send a signal. When he asked the visitor about this, he just grinned and pushed a single button on the screen.

'Ree-ree-ree-ree-ree-reeeeeeeeee-ree-ree-ree-ree-r ee-reeeeeeeeee...'

"What is the meaning of this signal? Is that a code?" Both Atvars asked They looked at each other a second later, surprised that they asked it at the same time.

The visitor just shook his head. "No gentlemen, not at all. What you see, and also see hear is Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite of mankind. Originally it was launched in 1957, but it seems...the Soviets pushed the launch date a biiiit forward.

Before the two Atvars, or even some of the shiplords could say anything, the hologram indicated that the second rocket has reached its orbit, and it released an object too. Instead of a small ball, it looked more like a larger brick, but too with several antennas on it. And again it started a broadcast. Surprisingly it was together with a visual part too, though it just showed a German waving flag, proudly showing the federal eagle on the banner.

"Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,

Über alles in der Welt,

Wenn es stets zu Schutz und Trutze

Brüderlich zusammenhält,

Von der Mosel bis an die Memel,

Von den Alpen bis an den Belt –

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,

Über alles in der Welt!

Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit

Für das deutsche Vaterland!

Danach lasst uns alle streben

Brüderlich mit Herz und Hand!

Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit

Sind des Glückes Unterpfand –

Blüh im Glanze dieses Glückes,

Blühe, deutsches Vaterland!"

And before they could even think about what just happened, the third rocket released its payload and several seconds later it started another broadcast. This time the visual part were pictures of iconic landmarks and buildings of the USA while a mixed chorus was singing with all its might.

"O! say can you see

by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hailed

at the twilight's last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars

through the perilous fight,

O'er the ramparts we watched,

were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets' red glare,

the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night

that our flag was still there;

O! say does that star-spangled

banner yet wave,

O'er the land of the free

and the home of the brave

O! thus be it ever,

when freemen shall stand

Between their loved home

and the war's desolation.

Blest with vict'ry and peace,

may the Heav'n rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made

and preserved us a nation!

Then conquer we must,

when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto:

„In God We Trust|In God is our trust;"

And the star-spangled banner

in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free

and the home of the brave!"

The visitor could hardly suppress a grin as he noticed that while the US anthem was playing an American flag was pulled up between two antennas, which now were obviously no antennas.

Atvar just stand there, not really comprehending what just happened. The visitor tried to explain.

"It is so easy Fleetlord. Humans always wants to be better than the other ones around them. That is why they build complex machines to show they are better. And obviously all these three nations tried to be better than the other ones by putting a satellite into orbit." He smirked while both Atvars where just standing there, mouths wide open.

The visitor just snickered. It seems they would need some time to recover before they would be able to think about where they could talk about a peace-treaty.

**- Queen Mary, just off-shore of the coast of the island of São Miguel, Azores, ten days after the deployment of the first three human satellites into an orbit of Earth (Tosev 3) - **

Atvar stood on the railing of one of the largest ships the Tosevites had built until now, and even though the ship was standing still, anchoring near the island, the constant splashing of waves against the ship made him feel sick, worse than the first time he had been in zero-gravity. And then the constant fresh, chilly wind...he felt like puking over the railing any minute now. He hoped that his delegation did not forget to bring some space-sickness-medication, hoping it would work.

"Good morning, Fleetlord. How are you doing?" the visitor said, coming out on deck, just having finished his breakfast and wanting to enjoy the fresh morning air of the Atlantic.

"The truth is that I rarely felt so miserable. I have no idea how you Tosevites manage to not throw up all time when being on such an unstable machine."

The visitor just shrugged and they started some small-talk, trying to make the time go by. It had been quite problematic to get so many delegates of various nations on this ship to negotiate. And it got even more complex because it was not just a negotiation between Humans/Tosevites and the Race , but also between the colonial powers and the colonies.

Many of them demanded total independence as quickly as possible while the colonial powers wanted to retain as much power as long as possible over them. Especially the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan were pretty...angered about loosing their colonies. For example as soon as the Japanese had agreed to the plan, that they would eventually have to leave Manchuria, Korea and their other possessions, they started to suck them dry of every natural ressource, oil, rubber, ores, wood, simply everything. What was left of their Imperial Navy was now transporting resources back to the Japanese home-islands, where they would just put into protected areas and serve as resources to rebuild Japan.

Their chat was interrupted when suddenly Sam Yeager and shiplord Straha came around the corner around the corner. Straha seemed to have less problems with the little movements of the ship as it moved a little bit from starboard to larboard.

Both member of their Race turned their eye-turrets on each other, squinting them. For over a minute they did nothing but stare at each other, their tail-stumps moving slowly in circles.

Yeager and the visitor looked at each other, just grinning at each other. This will be a rather interesting time on this ship.

PS: This chapter here was in parts inspired and also in parts copied (and modified) from the worldwar fanfic 'WorldWar: The Balance Destroyed' by AlbertG from the website


End file.
